Sign Maker Profile
High-rise wraps and building brands
Every city skyline is being covered with walls of scaffolding and can detract from an area's beauty, but to Greg Forster, this presents a business opportunity. Assistant editor, Benjamin Austin, spoke with the managing director of Embrace Building Wraps to learn more about how his business is bringing colour to construction sites and much more.
F
or decades, the beauty of a city skyline has been plagued by the skeletons of scaffolding. They are a necessary evil, expanding the landscape and preserving what is already there, but it is very often an eyesore. It is so ingrained into our infrastructure that people tend to walk by towers of the stuff without taking any notice, but for Greg Forster, it inspired him to make what his business is today.
With a background in advertising sales in airports and on roadsides, in 2006, he started his new company, Embrace Media that morphed into Embrace Building Wraps in 2013.
Like every good idea It started as a way to sell space on the side of a building to third-party advertisers. Business was good, but it didn’t bring the returning customer base he was hoping for, but like a lot of good ideas, he had an epiphany while sitting outside a pub.
Greg said: “I was effectively making myself redundant because every time I
built up someone's business, they would be bought out by competitors. “I was standing outside a pub one summer's afternoon in 2013, and across the road was some scaffolding in front of me. “I thought to myself I could sell that space to advertisers, but why don’t I speak to the people who own the building and to whoever erected the scaffolding and approach them, saying, why don’t we turn this into your own billboard. “I went home and over a weekend, pulled together an A4 flyer and then went back into London, where for three days I walked up and down the West End handing out brochures at construction sites. “By the end of the week, I had three enquiries, and a week later, I had confirmed work coming in on some smaller projects.
“I had the experience and skillsets in place and have the supplier know-how, as it is the same as doing the advertisement sales.
“What changed was who it was for, so it went from selling to one group of people to another.”
Managing director, Greg Forster outside the RH site
The company has since gone on to create some vast building wraps, having worked with some big names on the high street.
It has had dealings with Silverstone, IKEA, Selfridges & Co, and is currently working with luxury furniture brand, RH, as it looks to move into a former Abercrombie & Fitch building opposite the Royal Academy of Arts in Burlington Gardens. At the time of writing, it is still to be completed, but passers-by can see most of what is hoped to be achieved. Greg said: “They’ve erected scaffolding on three elevations and along the bottom, we have fitted composite panels ACP to the ply site hoarding. Then you have a PVC wrap that goes across the scaffold, Layher staircases and site accommodation cabins.
“Then, at the top and bottom, it has illuminated Cornice, and it also has 3D illuminated logos offset through the PVC wrap itself.”
The design has helped disguise the work and help blend the building into its surroundings while subtly advertising the company.
Selfridges & Co wrap in Birmingham
| 46 | May/June 2025
www.signupdate.co.uk
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