Every city skyline is being covered with walls of scaffolding and can detract from an area’s beauty, but to Greg Forster, it was a business opportunity. Assistant editor Benjamin Austin spoke with the managing director of Embrace Building Wraps to learn more about how his business his bringing colour to construction sites and much more.
Selfridges & Co wrap in Birmingham
For 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 Epiphone 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 in Burlington Gardens
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.
Greg continued: “When you’re doing projects like this, you need advertising consent from the local council, so they don’t like to see too much, and sometimes they only allocate a certain amount of space to it.
“So, with that, by making high-impact graphics or art, it improves the local aesthetic. It tells neighbours that you are a responsible contractor, and you are doing something that is looking to improve the area.”
A work of art
Walking by, you can’t see the extent of the building going on behind. All that is visible is a graphic imitating Greco-Roman architecture, as well as a large image of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man plastered on each side.
The Vitruvian Man wrap for RH in Burlington Gardens
When lit, it is a beautiful visual, giving a sense of high culture and authenticity, and if just walking by, it could be easily mistaken for the building – a statement Greg took as a compliment.
It is one of the six projects Embrace Building Wraps is currently undertaking in London and sits in the top three projects that Greg has been involved with.
The other two are the wrap of Selfridges & Co in Birmingham and the visual graphic installed for the IKEA in Oxford Circus in 2023.
The Selfridges & Co project was started in 2020 and was the world’s biggest printed scaffold wrap. It was made up of 24 individual wraps & offset frames covering an area of 8,500m2 and took six months to install.
The project in Oxford Circus was to help IKEA move into the former Top Shop. Little advertising could be done for this wrap due to its location above other well-known brands and being in a prominent place, but a subtle design was created.
One side of the building was wrapped entirely in a blue material with two large IKEA bag handles hanging from the top, imitating the iconic IKEA bags.
The rest was wrapped in a more generic visual design showing an outline of a building like flatpack instructions to prevent blurring the message with the other well-known brands below.
Greg said: “The Selfridges in Birmingham is one of my favourites purely because it was on a massive scale and the complexity of it, with individual wraps; also, the actual design is very striking.
“It had no advertising on it, it was more of an art installation, and you could see it all over the Birmingham skyline.
“The IKEA wrap is also a good one because of the scale and location, but also the 3D factor we had to consider.”
Wrapping for the future
With such large projects, consideration has to go into what will happen to the materials once they are taken down.
Large IKEA bag in Oxford Circus
It might seem difficult – after all, who would want a 750m2 IKEA bag – but Greg has managed to find inventive ways to dispose of his waste sustainably.
He said: “The PVC and PVC-free products can be taken away for lots of purposes, one being added to fossil fuels to make them burn for longer. Sometimes it is ground down and turned into things like bollards or signs to be put on Heras fencing.
“Some people have turned it into tote style bags; some use it as boot liners in cars.
“Here at Embrace Building Wraps, we ensure there should never be a conflict between supporting the future of our planet and turning a profit.
“It is with a great deal of pride that we are playing a role in the transition towards a more sustainable and environmentally improved future through our policies, procedures and commitments.
“Another initiative is we automatically each month and, on every occasion, install a project for our clients we help fund projects that collectively go some way to help reverse climate change.
“In the last 52 months alone, we have supported the prevention of 252CO2e from being emitted through 51 verified carbon avoidance projects & funded the planting of more than 17,000 new trees across 19 projects.
The company has found an almost perfect niche, but the concept, as bold as it may seem, is a simple one.
It not only protects the landscape of the area, but also gives privacy to the builders and helps the owner tap into an advertising space not previously utilised before.
It is probably why 65% of its customers are repeat business, they provide amazing decorations with expert installation and sustainable disposal.
