Link to bio: Steve Wenlock

Steve Wenlock was a sewing machine engineer, as was his father, working in the shoe and boot trade in the 1980s. But structural change in the sector left him without a job. He started a services business in his village offering key cutting, scissor sharpening, engraving, rubber stamp making and copying. 

It was the latter that took off, leading to expanding demand, larger machines and investment in desktop publishing. The longer runs where he ran up against the rather more cost effective litho print technology. The pages of Exchange & Mart yielded a company in Leeds offering a print start up package including a single-colour Hamada, a day’s training on how to use it, a small guillotine and printing down frame. “I spent a lot of time trying to get paper through it successfully,” he recalls. 

Publishing his own advertising-led magazine provided the necessary practice and business grew, aided by use of paper plates. The A4 Print & Copyshop bought a high street printer Flexprint. “I quickly realised I did not have the management skills to run two sites and amalgamated them. At that point we had to change from a lifestyle business to something more ambitious.”

What became Flexpress started selling via the internet, but this was not the focus for another five years until 2016. “At that time we found we were competing against online companies which were stealing work from local printers.” It had moved to a RMGT 924 LED UV press. Now it decided that despite the tight margins, it should become a trade only internet printer and took itself to the Print Show in 2016.

A B3 Indigo became a B2 Indigo. And this has now become an Indigo 100K alongside a new RMGT 924 LED UV. This feeds an Autobond laminator, two guillotines, Horizon perfect binder, stitcher and collating towers downstairs with upstairs Renz wire binder, Duplo DuSense 810 and multifinisher, IML case maker and Schmedt casing in machine.