60 seconds with Aura Print

Aura Print began with director Liam Smith printing for local businesses from the basement of his home in 2007. Originally it was mainly flyers and business cards but the offering grew as more machinery was purchased.

Twelve years and three premises later Aura Print is now a team bigger team with over a century of print experience. “We try and use our nimble size to our advantage by offering great customer service, fast turnaround and a large product range with lots of customisability that would be hard to do at a larger scale. We’re always trying to experiment with finishes so if you’re wanting something that extra bit special we can facilitate it.”

Where are you based?

Huddersfield. We moved to a new office in June with over double the floor space (7,000sqm) meaning we have a nice open office and an even bigger print floor that we’re filling up with even more finishing equipment

How many staff do you have?

Currently 16. Just two years ago we were at 10

What does your firm do?

What don’t we do is probably a better question. We try to take on anything we can do in-house. One thing we’re really proud of is our metallic foil finishing, so much so we’ve launched a new website just for foil called The Foil Printing Co (thefoilprintingco.com). Sorry for the shameless plug!

What’s your typical customer?

Pretty much everyone! We print for sole traders and SMEs right up to large businesses and major brands

Which geographic areas do you serve?

We love to serve our home of west Yorkshire but we have reach and work for companies up and down the UK. With the launch of our new foil site we’ve tried branching out to the USA which has been a challenging yet fun endeavour

What’s your USP?

We have a few but the ones that are at the heart of our business are customer service, going above and beyond, providing excellent quality, fast turnaround, being pocket friendly and offering unmatched customisability. We really try hard to make our customers over the moon so they want to come back to us for our whole service offering

What equipment do you run?

We have a Konica 1085 and our most recent investment is a Konica 6085 which is so accurate it’s amazing. We have laminators from Vivid and three Roland wide-format machines. Those are our workhorses. We then have lots of extra machines such as guillotines, creasers, booklet makers, and plotters.

What’s been your proudest achievement in the past few years?

The growth we’ve experienced in the past few years has led to our team really finding their feet so we’re all working together and producing some really amazing print that makes our customers ecstatic. We’re also really proud of our reviews from happy customers, because that reflects the hard work and care that the team puts in. 

Where do you see your business in five years’ time?

In five years’ time we’d love to have enough business flowing into the States so that we can open up another print facility over in America. Somewhere sunny and with a pool sounds perfect!

What’s your team’s favourite biscuit?

Whatever gets brought in is snapped up without question. But who can say no to a classic shortbread finger?