Celebrities, interior designers, artists, amateur photographers, doting relatives and people looking for something different to brighten up their homes are fuelling the growth of a Sheffield firm.
Forever Canvas, based in the city's Devonshire Quarter, was launched six years ago by Terry Coupe to capitalise on new technology which prints on canvas.
Over the last two years Terry and fellow director Sam Joyce have seen a sixfold increase in b
usiness, turning them into their canvas supplier's biggest customer.
Now the Devonshire Business Park company has returned from its first foray to Britain's leading giftware exhibition, the Spring Fair, with a sheaf of new orders from interior retailers around the country.
Forever Canvas' customers are an eclectic bunch. They include professional photographers mounting exhibitions or seeking a distinctive look for their pictures, and artists who, having sold an original, see a market for lifelike photographic copies on canvas.
Celebrities such as Lisa Riley – Emmerdale's Mandy Dingle – and Matt Littler - Max Cunningham from Hollyoaks – rub shoulders with kids whose doting grandparents want them immortalised on canvas and keen amateur photographers who want to do something special with their best efforts.
Interior designers, furniture and furnishings shops make use of Forever Canvas' collection of images.
The Eldon Street firm scored a major coup when it was asked to supply Image Source – one of the world's leading suppliers of royalty-free stock images – with canvases for its London offices.
Forever Canvas secured another prestigious contract with Red Bull to supply a dozen canvases with artistic images, subtly incorporating the energy drink giant's branding, for a foyer display accompanying theatre performances in Manchester.
The firm supplies Sheffield Wednesday with canvases bearing pictures of its Hillsborough ground, which are sold in the Owls' shop, and schools and hospitals too.
It also turns its Eldon Street works into 'Factory Shop' every Saturday, between 10am and 2pm, selling ex-display canvases and minor 'seconds' for a fraction of the normal shop price.
Sam Joyce says Forever Canvas gets a large amount of business through referrals by satisfied customers.
The company also has its own telesales operation and hopes to build up its UK-wide business through its website – www.forevercanvas.co.uk.
Sam and Terry put some of the company's success down to it offering a complete range of services in-house – everything from taking photographs and digitally retouching images to printing canvases and framing them.
It was that combination of skills which led to the Irish Police Museum choosing Forever Canvas to reproduce an ageing picture of one of the force's founders on canvas.
"A lot of people will print, but won't frame; others will frame and not print, but we will take the photograph, produce the artwork, print it and frame it," says Sam.
