A brief history of Horace Fuller Ltd
Horace Fuller Ltd. was established and first began manufacturing and developing the Fuller Seed Drill(tm), this was the first mechanical seed drill in the UK. This naturally lead to an agricultural beginning, and formed the first era of the Horace Fuller story.
Having proved to be dominant in this industry Horace Fuller Ltd expanded adding a fleet of vans that provided a door to door service to the farming community. After 1945 this grew dramatically and we were servicing most of the South of England. We were one of many agriculture-centred businesses operating within Sussex and surrounding counties. You can find more information on other local businesses thriving during this period of time here.
In the 1960's Horace Fuller completed the acquisition of Burgess & Randall in Pulborough, a shop that has since gone from strength to strength and has many long serving staff still there today.
Later when CAP (the Common Agricultural Policy) was formed with the joining of the old EEC, the quotas put on the farming industry caused business to suffer. The Butter Mountains and Milk Lakes were a thing of the past.
New ideas were considered, and the next era of garden machinery was integrated mowers into the firm, whilst still maximising sales through the agricultural side.
Through this difficult time Horace Fullers started to expand, even during the recession we retained all our staff. The late 1980's were greeted with the arrival of a new department - Radio Controlled Cars, this has supported local clubs for over 20 years. This area of the business was closed in 2016, but many of the clubs that were supported still continue today.
During the early part of the "noughties" the business and has developed further strings to our bow with the introduction of a far wider range of garden machinery including more tractors, chainsaws, trimmers, strimmers etc. This continued growth of product coincided with the expansion of our premises in Horsham where we can now display the products in a far greater area and have expanded our workshop too.
During a similar time period we added Garden and Estate Management to our portfolio of services. Headed by our gardening manager our team of gardeners offer an unrivalled service to many customers across Horsham and the surrounding areas. This department ran until 2018 when we decided to refocus on the core business of garden machinery.
During Feb 2009 Horace Fuller Ltd announced it was to open another showroom and repair centre in the Redhill area at the iO centre, Salfords. This is seen as another forward step to increase the amount of customers we can service.
In 2017 we expanded to our fourth branch by incoporating Ray Fosters Forest and Garden Machinery in Turners hill business. This is a great addition as it is a well established local business that fits in with the ethos of the company.