IT'S A WOMAN'S WORLD - Tara Wilson

It’s not always easy being a woman is it ladies? It seems we have to work twice as hard at some things, particularly our careers, to make the same headway as our male counterparts. But at the end of the day the taste of success is even sweeter when you’re a high achieving woman in a supposedly man’s world…

WORDS: LIV MORGAN

‘Girls can do digital print too’ — the tagline says it all. So do the four Irish Print Awards achieved every year Select Digital Print has been in business. The trousers behind the company are worn by Tara Wilson, a self-proclaimed ‘non-skirty kind of girl’. Tara is no stranger to knocking shoulders with the boys and they can try to catch up with her but it’ll be a hard task.

Select Digital Print was founded in 2003. Effectively Tara says she stood out on a ledge, closed her eyes and jumped. With ten years in the industry behind her and a sensible head on her shoulders she hit the ground running. “I always worked for someone else, always men and I never felt like I was taken seriously. So it got to the stage in my career where I knew more about the whole operation and running large format digital print than the person who owned the company did. Yet there was never an opportunity there for me to expand or progress.”

Like all true entrepreneurs Tara decided if the opportunity wasn’t going to come knocking she would just have to go in search for it. First stop was her bank managers office. “I asked for 100,000 euro to buy machinery but he said no. Then I went to the Enterprise Boards but they refused too because they felt like I would be causing displacement for other print companies.

Riled up as a force to be reckoned with, Tara went back to square one and haggled with her bank manager. “I decided to release the equity out of my house. The bank didn’t want to do that but I told them if they didn’t I’d take my mortgage somewhere else. In the end they gave me 50,000 euro to buy machinery. The rest I came up with myself.”

Since then Tara has progressed the company year on year; Like a piece of lego she keeps adding on! Select Digital has gone from just Tara in a rented IDA unit to an award-winning business, employing five others in a new larger premises that she bought herself in 2006.
“I think when I started off in business my competitors thought ‘yeah she’s here for a year or two’ but now that I’ve won the four Irish Print Awards they can see that we are here and we do have a legitimate business. I’m gaining their respect but it took four or five years to get that.”

Select Digital do not employ any sales people so generating business is all down to word of mouth. However, Tara is confident that the quality of the work they produce will see a constant flow of work come their way. Having some prestigious account holders that need work done every week means the snowball effect of business is achievable. Ad agencies such as McConnells and AFA O’Meara, now amalgamated together, are one constant client, along with ECS who are the main contractors for the RDS, Dublin.

Read more about Tara Wilson in the December | January 2009 issue of WMB, on newstands now.