Fiona’s Story

I’m very proud of Flourish and what we’ve achieved over the past five years. From the outside, being able to fit my business around my family, the time to bake and garden (though mysteriously not to clean…)  and the active blog and social media profile look effortless.

But we’ve all worked incredibly hard to get where we are today. And whilst I’m happy with the work-life balance and where the company is at now, things haven’t always been easy. We had our children unexpectedly young, moved to one of the most expensive areas of the country (Surrey) and were determined to make a go of things.

My life-changing moment

I genuinely believe that most business owners have a life-changing moment that takes them out of their corporate comfort zone and into the world of self employment. In 2004 I was an ambitious, successful corporate hotshot working as a Regional Director for printing.com. I was living the high life in Clapham and was looking forward to my then boyfriend (now husband) and I buying our first flat together.

Everything changed when we discovered I was pregnant. Having Ellie at the age of 25 changed both our lives, and my priorities had shifted. Rather than focusing on climbing the greasy corporate pole, I felt that working for myself would be more rewarding and would enable me to work more locally.

My problem was that unlike many of my newfound mummy friends, we didn’t enjoy the financial stability that having a baby in your thirties brings. Nor was Pete a Banker or Management Consultant! I needed to set up a business that would be serious enough to pay the mortgage.

The printing.com franchise

I founded up the printing.com franchise in Guildford in June 2005 and we became one of the fastest growing printing.com franchises in the country. I’m naturally entrepreneurial so from the start I was thinking about how we could build on the offering and create something with real customer loyalty.

We focused on delivering creative graphic design and quality print to small businesses in Guildford. And by February 2010 we had created more than 250 logos for small businesses in and around Surrey.

Five years on we’ve stayed true to those guiding principles, but the business has grown and evolved. We’ve developed a reputation as the business branding experts: creating intuitive corporate identities that powerfully represent the businesses we work with and help them become more profitable. And we now work with many companies – large and small, local and international, award-winning and start up: testament to our creativity and talent for creating strong brands.

A flourishing business

We launched Flourish in February 2010 having been lucky enough to be able to adapt my franchise agreement to accommodate both businesses. Six months on from launching Flourish has worked better than I could have dreamed of. Flourish has opened so many doors for us and we’ve worked on some truly inspiring projects.

The personal stuff

I’ve been pretty entrepreneurial over the past five years in setting up marketing workshops, a local Grow Your Business exhibition, a networking group for my village and writing a book, Exhibit, The SME’s Guide to Using Exhibitions to Grow Your Business. They’ve helped me position and market my own business. And they’ve seriously benefitted many of my clients.

And as the business has grown, so too has my family. Ellie, who was just 15 months when I started the business, is now at school. Pete and I married in September 2005, and we have a new addition, Jasper, who was born in September 2008. No business owner would ever claim that running a business is easy, and taking 5 months maternity leave, navigating the business through the recession and maintaining our high standards has certainly been a challenge! And yet, with a lot of support from my husband and the team in the studio I have a thriving business and a family I am immensely proud of.

And to the future? Flourish is already opening up some exciting new opportunities and I look forward to working on some much larger and more in depth brand and marketing projects. I also have a second book planned for the summer and that holiday home in Dorset is still very much up there on the wish list!