Urban Planters Reading: Cultivating a lucrative career
"...a solid support structure of the Urban Planters franchisor, which provides extensive training as well as business support, was the decisive factor.’" - Fergus Belcher, Urban Planters Franchisee
Many aspects of the horticultural and agricultural industry involve hard work for little financial return and when Fergus Belcher came to Urban Planters after working at the NFU in Somerset, he was looking to launch a more lucrative career with plants. While he was thinking of set up his own business, he was also interested in the ready-made format of a franchise.
At a franchise exhibition, he came across Urban Planters and was immediately attracted by the idea of running his own franchise while also being able to develop his knowledge of plants.
‘With an agricultural degree and through my work at the NFU, I had dealt extensively with plants,’ Fergus said. ‘But the concept of interior landscaping was a new challenge for me.
‘The dual benefits of running a company while at the same time having a solid support structure of the Urban Planters franchisor, which provides extensive training as well as business support, was the decisive factor.’
Over the past decade, Fergus has gone from having no client base to around 200 customers. His schemes have also won a raft of national industry awards, including BALI and eFIG awards, for design and maintenance.
‘It was a sharp learning curve in the early years,’ Fergus continued. ‘But now we have a wide range of clients wanting everything from two simple plants to a wide ranging scheme incorporating three to four hundred plants.’
