
We hear how the retail executive turned a struggling book club into a profitable business
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Sam Fenwick
Hello and welcome to Business Daily meets from the BBC World Service with me, Sam Fenwick. Today we meet a turnaround woman who specializes in rescuing businesses in trouble.
Joanna Reynolds
And when I went in, we were losing $5 million and we needed to kind of figure it out. And it was brilliant. We turned it around in two years.
Sam Fenwick
Joanna Reynolds has built her career on restructuring struggling businesses, three of them from global media brands to one of Britain's oldest publishing houses. She specializes in stepping in when the future looks uncertain.
Joanna Reynolds
It was a bold move, but it was a move we had to make. If we didn't make that move, we we would have died as a business.
Sam Fenwick
Her most recent success is the Folio Society, a company that was losing money, facing the rise of E readers and stuck in an aging business model 10 years on, it's profitable, growing and owned by its employees. I went to meet her to find out how she did it and what it takes to save a company. In a quiet corner of London, tucked away behind a modest facade not far from the River Thames, is a company that's made its mission to turn books into objects of beauty. The Folio Society was founded in 1947 in the aftermath of World War II, with a simple but Radical idea that great literature deserves to be beautifully made and presented. It publishes hardback editions with hand drawn illustrations, gilded spines and heavyweight paper. Books that are not just to be read, but to be cherished. Let's go inside.
Joanna Reynolds
These are all our books. So you can see how it's changed over the years.
Sam Fenwick
So these the earliest books here on the left?
Joanna Reynolds
Yes, so. So you got the Bible and Samuel Johnson and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then we kind of went through the 50s and 60s and 70s. These were much more sort of classic novels from around the world. But if you then look at the more recent books, you'll see they're much more colorful. You know, you can see the changes that are happening.
Sam Fenwick
The Folio Society began life very differently. When it was founded in 1947, it was set up as a book club, a subscription model where members committed to a small number number of titles each year, often without knowing exactly what they'd receive. For decades, that model worked. It built a loyal following and gave the company a reputation for quality and curation. But it also meant the Folio Society changed slowly. And by the time Joanna Reynolds arrived, the business was still shaped by decisions made for a very different era.
Joanna Reynolds
So I've been in the business now for 10 years. Even when I came in, right, it was still a book club when I came in. You got four books a year, you committed to them and you didn't necessarily know what they were going to be. By the time I came into the business, the book club model, which I knew well by the way, was dying. That model no longer worked and we needed to change because not only did it not work for the customer, it wasn't really working for us. I think perhaps it made Folio a bit lazy because, you know, those four books were going to go to those customers anyway.
Sam Fenwick
Joanna, we're in a world dominated by screens and scrolling, aren't we? Everyone's on their phones, everyone's on their E Readers.
Joanna Reynolds
Even when I came in, there was real concern that the growth of E readers was going to destroy Folio. And when I came in, all of the business metrics were in free fall. Right? We'd lost money for 10 years.
Sam Fenwick
You've got a whole display here in front of us. Can we just get out of our chairs and have a look at some of what you've got on display?
Joanna Reynolds
Okay, so why don't we start with Shakespeare? This was our limited edition of Shakespeare. We produced a thousand. And the story behind this is absolutely crazy. So this cover is woven silk. So Every cover was hand done. We launched this book at the Globe, obviously not far from here. Why wouldn't you? Down the river.
Sam Fenwick
I don't know whether this is saying a lot about me, but my eyes are drawn to this one here.
Joanna Reynolds
Excellent.
Sam Fenwick
Okay, this is the Avengers.
Joanna Reynolds
So Captain America. Avengers, you know, some of their biggest characters. And then we've now started doing dc, see, as well.
Sam Fenwick
Ah, now, you did say I had to smell it.
Joanna Reynolds
Yes. Oh, yes. Do smell that.
Sam Fenwick
There is something about the smell of books.
Joanna Reynolds
So strong.
Sam Fenwick
Standing here surrounded by shelves of beautifully made books, it's hard to imagine just how close this company came to disappearing. By the time Joanna arrived, there was barely anything left in the bank.
Joanna Reynolds
We did get down to our last 200 grand, you know, which couldn't faintly pay the team, let alone anything else. And I looked at the numbers and they were in free fall. But the one number that hit me was we sent out then and still do a paper catalog at Christmas and holiday. And we were getting a 20% response in direct marketing. And I've been in direct consumer marketing a long time. That's been the basis of my career. That's a response level you don't see. That's huge. That told me that the customers we had were really committed to us and what we did. And I thought, we can build on this.
Sam Fenwick
What was it about that 20% figure that sparked something in your brain that you thought you could save this business?
Joanna Reynolds
I know how important response levels are. People don't respond unless they're excited and they're committed to the brand. That meant there was a group of people that were very committed to Folio. If they were that committed, there must be other people like them. We needed to go out and find them. And there was no digital business. Right. We didn't have was nothing.
Sam Fenwick
Sounds bizarre.
Joanna Reynolds
Everything was paper based. Right. We had catalogs and sent direct mail. We weren't using the omnichannel that you need to use, which is madness. And so once we started using our website, using digital, going to social, building our social presence, and we've now got half a million people on social media. We get 20 million interactions every month. You know, there's such involvement from our customers. And so what's happened is that we got rid of the book club model and, you know, everybody went, oh, this is going to be disastrous. And the customer service team said to me, oh, you know, you, we, we won't be able to talk to you in August because everybody will be complaining. And we got rid of the book club model and there was silence, no complain. And so now everybody can buy, anybody can buy, you can buy when you want, you can buy what you want. But that means every book has to be important. Now obviously we make mistakes sometimes and they something doesn't sell well. But generally every book fights for itself.
Sam Fenwick
I suppose the big difference though from running a company where you know how many people have subscribed and they're going to get four books a year, to a non subscription model where you have to guess how many books you're going to sell. That's quite different, isn't it?
Joanna Reynolds
Yep, it is, yeah. It's a risk and it was a bold move, but it was a move we had to make. If we didn't make that move, we would have died as a business.
Sam Fenwick
Ten years ago, the Folio Society was turning over just £10 million a year. That's around US$15 million. By the time we recorded this interview, the business was on course to generate around US$23 million a year.
Joanna Reynolds
I think the future looks pretty good actually, particularly for hardback books. They've proved resilient. Sometimes you need to escape and what books give you is that moment of escape and there's a whole wellness part of us reading all of us. I think there's good future for us all.
Sam Fenwick
These aren't just things that look pretty on someone's coffee table, are they? You want people to read these books, don't you?
Joanna Reynolds
These are absolutely not coffee table books. These are books that people become very involved with. We love producing these books and people love receiving them and reading them and getting involved with them. They tell us how much. They send us pictures of them, unboxing them, opening them up, reading them, where they're reading them. And it's the joy that this gives you that's so important. And, and you were saying about the smell of the book earlier. Just when you open up for the first time and see what's inside and how this has been envisaged by whatever artist has looked at it.
Sam Fenwick
They're not cheap though, are they?
Joanna Reynolds
Some of them?
Sam Fenwick
No, I mean we're talking like 100 pounds, hundred dollars.
Joanna Reynolds
Some of our books are, you know, Game of Thrones, which is a really fantastic series for us and JR Martin was very excited with them, which is great. I mean they're, you know, they're, yeah, they're over well over 100 pounds and well over $100. So yeah, some of them are expensive.
Sam Fenwick
So who are the people that are buying these books?
Joanna Reynolds
When I came in, they were, you know, over 60 year old white men. On the whole, the age of the people reading our books has changed. So now we also have as many people from 25 to 34 as we do over 60. And what we found is that younger people, all people actually who buy our books, if there's a book they love, they want to buy the most wonderful edition of that book. The physical, the tangible part of books is still huge for people. They love to hold books, to read them, to open them. That physicality is becoming more important. It's sort of really ramped up during the pandemic, but it's not gone away. And we wondered if it would go away, but it hasn't. It's still there. And it's true around the world. I mean, we sell around the world, right? So everywhere, people are still cherishing wonderful books.
Sam Fenwick
You're listening to Business Daily meets from the BBC World Service.
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Joanna Reynolds
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Sam Fenwick
I'm Sam Fenwick and today I'm talking to business turnaround expert Joanna Reynolds, managing director of the Folio Society. Now, this isn't the first company that she's been asked to rescue. Before Folio, Joanna Reynolds had already transformed two other struggling businesses at Time Life Europe and Reader's Digest, both global media brands facing serious financial trouble. In each case, the pattern was similar. Falling revenues, outdated business models and the need for rapid and sometimes uncomfortable change.
Joanna Reynolds
With Reader's Digest, I ran a magazine called Money Wise. But Also, I took over Reader's Digest magazine. The magazine was losing money when I went in. So we thought, we're going to look at it and see how we can change it. And one of the major things that made a difference was the guy that did all the production for the magazine itself. He came to me and said, joanna, if we made the magazine this tiny bit smaller, it would fit onto a different press and this is how much it would save you. And everybody went, oh, you can't do that because everybody will notice. And I went, yeah, we can't do that. And he said, yeah, we should do that. And we did it. Nobody noticed. And it saved us a fortune. That was really exciting. It was really exciting.
Sam Fenwick
Time Life, I mean, that was a huge turnaround as well. You went from losing 5 million to generating 5 million in the space of five years.
Joanna Reynolds
Yes. Yeah. So Time Life was. Is part of Time Warner or was part of Time Warner. We were working in DVDs and CDs all across Europe. And when I went in, we were losing $5 million and we needed to kind of figure it out. So, you know, we again, restructured, looked at it all, changed the way we were using our marketing channels. They again, were very much direct mail. We got rid of all of that. We started using tv, which was a really strong channel, particularly if you're in music and video, obviously, because you can hear and see it. And then also outbound telemarketing, very strong. Ringing our customers, having a chat to them, seeing what they wanted. And it was brilliant. We turned it around in two years.
Sam Fenwick
One thing that you've said a couple of times that I've. I've kind of noticed is that you go out and talk to the consumer, don't you? You go out and talk to who's buying your product to make sure that you are hitting the right mark with them.
Joanna Reynolds
Yes. And that's one of the things I love about direct consumer marketing, is that you can do that. The other thing that's been amazing is that, you know, with the growth of Internet and then broadband coming in, which was a phenomenal game changer, you know, we were considered the lowest of the low back in the day. Now everybody wants to understand how to sell direct to their consumers, how to find out about them, how to use that information. Well, not badly, because you can abuse that information if you're not careful. And, you know, it's been fantastic. I've just kind of ridden that wave, which is brilliant.
Sam Fenwick
Joanna Reynolds has turned around multiple businesses and she's done it by making tough, sometimes unpopular decisions. But when I asked her about her proudest career moment, she doesn't talk about sales growth or profitability. She talks about turning the Folio society into an employee owned business.
Joanna Reynolds
It means that the shareholders sell the business, sometimes all of the business, sometimes part of the business. In our case, it was all of the business to the people that work in the business. And we've now paid off 80% of it. And once we've paid the shareholders off, the business will be owned equally by everybody that works here.
Sam Fenwick
And what does that mean for the workforce? What does it mean for productivity?
Joanna Reynolds
So what that'll mean. So one of the things we protected when we set this up was we have a 10% bonus scheme every year. And again, everybody gets the same. It means you're all working together. But the other interesting thing it does is that it makes people aware of how well everybody's doing and how hard they're working and they're, they want to give their best and do their best and it becomes even more important rather than less, which is insane.
Sam Fenwick
Work becomes stronger.
Joanna Reynolds
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And when I presented it, people cried. I mean, it was very emotional. I think for people here it was the proudest moment of my working life.
Sam Fenwick
The decision changed the structure of the business, but it also changed how people here feel about their work.
Folio Society Employee 1
Well, I started working here in 1987, so I feel like the little kid that grew up here. Yeah, it's close to my heart. It means a lot to me. Really Does.
Sam Fenwick
Does it mean that you're closer to the business in some way? That it's not just a job?
Folio Society Employee 1
It's definitely not just a job because I actually initially came here just for work experience. So I thought, I'll be at six months and I'll be on my way. Nearly 38 years later, I'm still here.
Sam Fenwick
And now you own a bit of it.
Folio Society Employee 1
Exactly. So yeah, it's special. It's really special.
Folio Society Employee 2
I thought it was fantastic. I thought it was a really unusual way of kind of running the business. I think it gives everyone that works here a real sense of, of pride in what we do and that we're working in the same direction because we all want the same thing. I mean, everyone's really passionate that works here anyway. But I think knowing that you're a partial owner just like reinforces that even further.
Sam Fenwick
Did it play a part in, you know, kind of applying and definitely taking.
Folio Society Employee 2
The job 100%, knowing there's the kind of benefit in that we get a profit Share. So there's a monetary incentive, but actually I thought the kind of standing of the business and the kind of. It's like a real altruistic kind of setup was really appealing to me as an employee.
Sam Fenwick
How does it change you personally about how you feel about where you work?
Folio Society Employee 3
It makes you feel seen, seen, recognized, heard. They all talk about, oh, we're in this together and, you know, we are heard. Give us your feedback. But when you're an elt, it actually is the case. You are heard, your recommendations are taken on board, your worries about the business. And also on the flip side, you are making an impact. You are, quote, unquote, a business owner, essentially. So you feel that responsibility is shared amongst everyone rather than being a cock in a wheel at a bigger company, essentially.
Sam Fenwick
For Joanna Reynolds, ownership isn't just about incentives. It's about how people think, how they behave and how they work together. And that belief's been shaped in part by her own experience.
Joanna Reynolds
When I was young, I didn't know I had it. You know, I didn't really think about it. I just learned to deal with it. I mean, I always had problems spelling, and even now I have to look up words quite a few times a day when I'm writing emails. I'm very good with numbers and I can always see trends and patterns. But that's also one of the things that dyslexic people often can.
Sam Fenwick
Some people might think it's unusual that someone who is dyslexic would have this relationship with books and run a publishing company.
Joanna Reynolds
They probably would. I've always read a lot and I think once you get to a certain point, you can do that. And to be honest, when I found out, it didn't really matter because it was just part of me. And I think you'll find a lot of people have dyslexia, but that's fine. And it's not just fine, it's great, often, because it does mean people come at things differently. And that's not a bad thing. We all need to have a range of people within a business and that's what makes it work really well. We got. You know, I've always made sure I. When I work with people, there's different people around me because that makes it much better.
Sam Fenwick
Joanna Reynolds, managing director of the Folio Society, was speaking to me. Sam Fenwick, you've been listening to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. Please subscribe to our podcast Search for Business Daily. Wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
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This episode spotlights Joanna Reynolds, CEO and turnaround specialist, who transformed the historic Folio Society from an ailing, loss-making relic into a vibrant, profitable, employee-owned publisher. The conversation explores how she rescued the company by abandoning outdated business models, embracing digital channels, empowering employees, and fostering a workplace culture rooted in pride and ownership.
Short testimonials from employees underscore the emotional and motivational impact of employee ownership:
Joanna Reynolds’ tenure at the Folio Society is a masterclass in decisive leadership, innovation rooted in customer insight, and the power of transforming not just business models but workplace culture. Her philosophy embraces both digital evolution and the enduring value of the tactile, beautiful book. The move to employee ownership redefines the purpose of work for her team, creating a shared mission and personal pride in the company’s success. Through her personal journey—including her dyslexia—Joanna embodies how diversity and transparent leadership create resilient, adaptive organizations. This episode offers a rich, inspiring blueprint for anyone interested in corporate turnarounds, publishing, or leadership.