Flower Market wholesaler Porters Foliage has expanded during December, taking on an additional unit and adding new shop signage to create a brand-new look.

Porters has expanded its footprint by taking over the units formally used by G.B. Foliage - which closed at the end of August when the owner Dave Gorton retired – and it’s the perfect time to introduce Porters’ new look.

“The aim was to bring the shop livery and the website design together, to create one unified brand identity for Porters Foliage,” says Bryan Porter, the fifth generation of his family to run the business. “We’ve used the same design on our web shop for a little while now and we’ve already had some great feedback. What we’ve seen since we’ve introduced our new signage is that our physical shop is now much more inviting and really makes customers want to step inside.”

Three key messages are used on the new signage, helping to explain the wide assortment of stems and foliage found inside the larger premises: ‘British Foliage and stems from around the world’; ‘Foliage and moss suppliers since 1910’; and ‘Dried stems & inspiration from around the world’.

The livery also includes the website address (www.foliage.co.uk) and the email needed to place orders (sales@portersfoliage.com), to further integrate the web shop and physical shop sites, so that customers can place orders in whichever way works best.

“A lot of our core customers are based relatively close to the Market, but there are the obvious logistical access challenges,” says Bryan. “We see a lot of customers more often than we did pre-Covid because they are not buying as much on each visit. They tend to buy what they need on any given day.”

The web shop offers customers a choice of how and when they order, with nationwide delivery coming in 2025. “To offer the facility of delivery is a way of us keeping the trade going through the Market,” adds Bryan. “We offer the best service and support, whichever method our customers choose to shop with us.”