Founded in 1995, Howdens has become the first choice for Kitchen, joinery and and hardware for the trade. Howdens has grown from an initial 14 outlets to over 750 depots throughout the UK and Europe, and is a firm favourite for more than 470,000 loyal trade professionals.

In 2020 Howdens wanted to roll out a re-brand across a number of their depots in the UK. The company contacted Hexcite and asked if the company could undertake a pilot exercise at their depot in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

With this being completed to their satisfaction, Howdens than asked if Hexcite would be able to scale up to undertake the rebrand of a further 80 depots larger number of depots. This was part of a larger rebrand exercise to change the signage from black text on white background to white on red format.

For this project, time was limited; the project was due to start in October and be completed in just 10 weeks. Nonetheless, by utilising the resources within Hexcite subsidiary Blaze Signs for the site surveys, production and installations, Hexcite  successfully completed the rebranding work ahead of deadline, proving the ability of the group to undertake large scale mass signage updates.

Howdens were so impressed by the results a project was set up to undertake a brand update across the remainder of the depot estate. Rather than assign the work to one contractor, this was to be split between two suppliers who would focus their work along a geographical split North and South of Birmingham in the West Midlands. After requesting 4 suppliers to tender for the business, Hexcite subsidiary Blaze (with Cygnia performing engineering and installation support) were awarded the contract to update 306 depots across the South of the UK.