2024 is proving to be a big year for the Welch Group. They celebrated a very impressive 90th anniversary at the end of March and to acknowledge the incredible achievement of a family organisation reaching this milestone, they are announcing a few internal changes, a whole new brand ID and an eye-catching new website for the Welch Group.
‘We want our message to be clear,’ says Chris Welch, ‘we remain as strong as ever on maintaining the exceptional standards of customer service and operational excellence we always have, but we want to show that we are ready to embrace the future with positivity and drive – excuse the pun!’
Chris officially took the reins of the business as MD in April this year from his father Jim, effectively bringing Welch’s Transport into its fourth generation of family ownership. Jim is moving to focus on the Group as a whole.
Respect for the past
‘Our respect for the heritage of the company was key to how the new brand would work,’ continues Chris. ‘There have been 90 years of hard work and dedication from hundreds of people that we should honour. At the same time, we were keen to clearly display our dynamic energy for progress. As we head to our 100th year, we aim to be as successful as we have ever been, continuing to prioritise our clients’ needs wherever we can.’
Using our 90th year as a landmark point in the history of the organisation to also make a difference to our operations, Chris and his team are bringing the various associated business units together under one cohesive Welch Group brand – Transport, Warehousing, Specialist Movements, Truck and Van Centres, Contract Logistics, Installations, and Net Zero.
‘It’s important that our customers clearly understand exactly what services we can help them with,’ explains Chris. ‘With our special story of heritage and progress to tell, the new brand is cleverly designed to bring our group of services together using a set of nine new logo identities. We wanted to achieve the sense of a family of service offerings united by a distinctive shared look.’
Each logo shares the identical roundel shape and core blue colour, with an accent colour on a stylised dynamic ‘W’ representing each division.
The new Welch’s Transport logo uses the organisation’s traditional cream and blue as a nod to its long history, and the Group one has a white W, representing all the colours combined (as in the light spectrum).
Looking to the future
‘We felt it would be too much of a departure from our history to use any other shape than the roundel to display our brand, however, we did want to communicate a fresh energy and forward-looking dynamic,’ shares Chris. ‘So, the use of the stylised W we feel provides a sense of movement and direction. We’ve extracted the W element of the logo for use in some exciting new designs for our new livery too.’
Artistic repetition of the stylised W creates a livery that has incredible impact and communicates a vibrant new energy.
‘As Welch’s Transport moves into its next generation of family ownership, it feels like the right time to make a strong statement about our future as well as our past,’ explains Chris.
‘The new brand will be rolled out onto new liveries this year and into the next four years across the fleet.
‘So, in effect, we have two new livery concepts hitting the roads of the UK in 2024,’ continues Chris, both linked by the fact that we are celebrating our 90th birthday, and both with a special story to tell’.
In January this year we revealed our 90th year logo and livery, including a new strapline that again focuses on our strong heritage.
‘Trusted for Generations. Excellence in logistics since 1934.’
‘We wanted a logo and strapline that instantly celebrates our 90 years in service to the transport industry, and shows that we respect how that has been built on consistent hard work and a relentless focus on the best possible service,’ explains Chris.
‘With both the 90th year logo and the new Welch Group brand ones, we are keen to communicate a deep respect for our heritage alongside a positive and dynamic approach to the future. We also needed to show that Welch’s Transport is part of a family of services all run with the same high standards of service excellence.
To bring this clarity about the services to life, we have also developed a brand-new website that makes it super easy for visitors to navigate their way round it and find out exactly how the Welch Group can support them.
‘Of course,’ explains Chris, ‘we want to make a memorable impact in the industry and on people everywhere with our new brand,’ he continues. ‘The new website will go a long way to clarifying for visitors all the services we offer at the Welch Group, and show them what makes us the long-standing family business we are.
‘I really hope that, with the strong visual statement the new brand ID makes, and its focus on the value of trust to what we do, it will be recognised for celebrating that ours is an industry (and an organisation) that is en-route to achieving great things.’
Written by Jamie Sands from Welch Transport, a member of The Local View Business Directory.
