As the company’s 50th anniversary approaches, it’s fair to say a lot has changed at Bonk & Co over the years.
The wood-burning stove specialists have been a cornerstone of the Inverness business community for decades – but a quick tour through their Harbour Road showroom shows you that’s not all they’re focused on.
You’ll find the stoves and cookers you’re expecting. That remains their core business.
But you’ll probably find some things you didn’t anticipate: furniture, chocolate, even baby clothes.
It’s all part of the firm’s strategy to diversify what it offers, to allow it to handle the peaks and troughs that come with selling its main products.
The wood burning trade doesn’t follow the same ebbs and flows as most other businesses.
In fact, in times of global crisis or market volatility demand for their stoves actually sky-rockets.
“People see stoves as a good investment,” said Alex Dolby, Bonk & Co’s managing director.
“It’s their own island, a heating source they can control. It’s not something some nasty dictator is going to be able to have an influence on.
“Whether it’s the Covid pandemic where people are wanting to invest in their own homes, or war in Ukraine, we’ve repeatedly seen this over the years.”
‘We want to diversify even more’
Those boom times keep staff rushed off their feet.
But we’re currently in a trough with stove sales down 50% across the UK in 2023-24.
And the nature of selling products that last for a long time means that those same customers may not be looking to make a major purchase again for a while.
The uncertainty created by the Scottish Government’s plan to ban wood-burning stoves in new build homes has also damaged the industry – even though there was ultimately a U-turn.
Alex took the reins as managing director in 2016 and finding other ways to support the core business of selling stoves has been a key focus.
They want to host more events at Harbour Road and start serving barista-quality coffee to their customers.
“People are starting to see us as more of a destination, as an experience,” Alex said. “And to protect ourselves, we want to diversify even more.
“We want to create an environment that if stoves disappeared as a brand, as a shop, we would still survive.”
Family at the heart of Bonk and Co’s philosophy
Serving coffee and building a reputation for selling greeting cards is a far cry from Bonk and Co’s early days.
The company’s story began on the Black Isle in the early 1970s, when enterprising farmer William Dolby travelled to a trade show in Europe and learned about the growing popularity of wood burning stoves.
He identified a gap in the UK market and although things got off to a slow start – many of the initial 25 stoves he brought back sat in a garage at his farm in Drynie – things picked up and Bonk and Co was born in 1976.
Since then, trade has grown exponentially.
William’s son and daughter-in-law, Andrew and Deborah Dolby, took charge in the 1980s and are still heavily involved.
That family-run focus has continued ever since, with William’s grandson now managing director and Alex’s wife, Emma, also in a key role.
Why is the company called Bonk and Co?
As for the name, well, that’s a funny story.
There was talk about potentially changing it around 15 years ago.
But the strength of the brand it has built in the Highland capital over a period of decades made the family quickly realise that doing so would be pure folly.
Alex said: “My grandfather’s name was William, Billy to a lot of people.
“In the 1950s, there was a cartoon character in the papers called Billy who used to run around hitting people in the head.
“The caption that came up was ‘bonk!’. So his uncle nicknamed him Billy Bonk, it stuck and that’s what his family called him.
“He called all his companies Bonk, it was Bonk and Company, Bonk Timber, Bonk Contractors, whatever he started.
“It started from innocent roots, it didn’t have the same connotations that it does now.
“But when we had a branding company look at it with us, they said we didn’t realise how much gold it was worth.
“We’ve been going since the 70s, there’s so much history, you cannot change the name.”
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