Rosie Whitelock is Managing Director of book printing business Bonacia and founder of Women in Print UK. In this interview, Rosie speaks to Karis Copp about leading and growing a business, how Bonacia champions young writers and entrepreneurs through publishing, the importance of a fun company culture, and why she founded the initiative Women in Print UK.

How did you get into the print industry? 

I think it was inevitable, really. My parents actually started their business, Forward Press, when I was very young, with a printing press in the garage, before moving into their own premises, and then growing the business further. When I left university I joined the family business, and my career in print progressed from there. That company went into liquidation in 2010, and my sister Morgan and I worked to start Bonacia. We offer similar services and we managed to buy the assets of the previous business to start Bonacia in 2010. We’re still going strong, and growing quite quickly.

Bonacia is predominantly a book printing company. We have two main arms of the business; one is Young Writers, which promotes literacy in schools, and the other side is the book printing arm which is literally just printing books for whoever wants it. They send us a PDF, we turn it into a book and send it out for them. So it’s pretty simple!

Can you explain more about the Young Writers scheme?

We promote literacy within schools by opening up poetry and creative writing competitions to children. We send free resources to the schools which they can use to get kids involved with reading and writing and loving it a little bit more. Then they write their poems and stories and they send those to us, and we've got a team of editorial here to read through every single poem and story and decide which ones to publish, and then the parents can buy the books. Seeing themselves as published authors makes them more interested in reading and writing, which is always a good thing. We get so much positive feedback via email and great traction on Twitter saying how excited the kids are to be in the book, and how it made them fall in love with writing again. 

What are some of the challenges and benefits of running a family business?

It definitely has its pros and cons! We’re quite lucky as we make a real effort to leave work at work, so when we go to mum and dads for a roast dinner on a Sunday, we try not to talk business. We are all so invested in it because it is our family, which is what we see it as, so everybody’s really passionate, but then on the flipside we can say how we really feel, because we’re family. However, you can’t always leave it at the door, and sometimes that’s when the best conversations happen. For example, we could all be out for one of our birthdays and we end up talking about work, sometimes that’s when you come up with the craziest and best ideas!

Bonacia looks like it has a really fun company culture – how do you build that and what does that environment mean to you?

Because of our size, we are very much a small business, and we are all very close. Morgan and I work really hard to try and keep that culture as we grow. That can be tricky, but I know everyone member of staff’s name and plan to keep it that way as we continue to grow. We really have a lovely culture, it’s a nice place to work – one of our mottos is ‘have fun, get shit done’. We’re really open and honest about what our values are. I would hate anyone to be waking up and thinking ‘I don’t want to go there’. It’s got to be a nice place to spend eight hours a day.

You founded Women in Print UK – why did you start this initiative, and what has been the reception?

For the first seven years of Bonacia, we were fairly hidden; we didn’t go to industry events, and I don’t think I realised how male-dominated it was until I started attending them – then it dawned on me. It happened naturally, we were at an awards event and decided to take a photo of all the women there, and the engagement and support it gained on LinkedIn, starting Women in Print was a no brainer. It showed that women in the industry do need more support, they do need to be showcased more, I think that’s really important. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback, think it’s a great initiative. To be honest, we probably aren’t doing as much around it as we could, as me and Laura [Conneely, Rosie’s PA and Department Manager at Bonacia] are fitting it around our day-to-day jobs. I’d love for it to be more than it is at the moment. It’s had great feedback from men and women alike – men are 100% behind it, they often get in touch offering their help, so that’s great.

What’s next for Women in Print UK?

For me it’s getting more people involved – I believe women feel like they shouldn't invest in themselves as much as men do, so when we host events where women pay for a ticket, I think women sometimes question whether they should be spending that money to take themselves somewhere that isn't going to necessarily benefit their day-to-day job, even though it is really important. And especially because men generally hold a lot of senior positions and women have to get permission from somebody to spend the money or take two hours out of their workday. Whereas, generally in the print industry the men have the final say. I think we need to try and drum up a lot more support before we hold another event.

What are your thoughts on the state of publishing?

We are seeing an increasing trend of entrepreneurs, coaches and speakers wanting to publish books, so we've seen that market grow incredibly recently. Everybody wants to be an author now because it gives them authority in their field. At Bonacia, we've added some new services, so we fulfil direct from our factory now which means they just send us the files will print the book and send out regular orders – these entrepreneurs are busy running their businesses, so it’s a popular service. It’s all well and good to do it on Amazon, but these people already have their own following; they don’t want people to have to go on to Amazon and pay 35% of the fee to them when they’re marketing it themselves. They can just make their books available on their own website and get the full money for the order, and Bonacia will print and ship. 

We have seen our book printing side of the business grow phenomenally, especially in that business market. They say books are the new business cards – you can get a A5 black and white softback for just a couple of quid. People are using those because it’s a great way to demonstrate their expertise, so that side of things is really growing.

You were recently recognised at the SME National Business Awards in the Businesswoman of the Year category – what does that kind of recognition mean to you?

I think we all get imposter syndrome – you think, am I doing the right thing, or am I the right person to be leading this company, so that confirmation that I’m doing alright is great!

What does the future hold for Bonacia?

We've started doing quite a lot of exporting out to the US because print there is just so expensive, it's cheaper to print books here and ship them, so that's one of the avenues we’re going down, doing a lot more international exporting over to the US. I think our strategy has got to be steady, sustainable growth – we've grown quite quickly over the last few years, and we’re in a place now where we need to grow at a steady pace rather than going like the clappers, so sustainable growth for us is important.