Morplan 160 years young !

Morplan today is a highly organised trade supplier to the UK fashion industry with a paper and on-line catalogue, a busy West End shop and a sales team on hand to deal with the most complicated enquiry. But it wasn't always this way.

Turn the clock back nearly 160 years to the Camberwell area in South East London and you would find Mr Morrish, the company's founder, busy in his print workshop in Union Row Cottages. The earliest official records traced are the local rate books of January 1846 when the sum of £1 13s 4d was paid. This dates Morplan at well over 150 years old.

The business must soon have expanded as by 1870 it was also operating in the City at Paternoster Square, London, EC4. It was the closure of the printers, Chalfonts, that lead to the formation in 1894 of Morrish & Chalfont, 'wholesale and retail stationers, steam printers, paper bag and account book manufacturers'. This new company was based at 56 Great Titchfield Street, London, W.1 and its descendant, Morplan, still occupies the same site today!

Over the next 100 years, Great Titchfield Street was to change almost beyond recognition as London's wholesale fashion district grew up around it. Although stationery and printing remained, fashion industry items eventually became Morplan's primary business interest.

By the 1960s Morplan was operating from four sites in North, South, East and West London and had started to experiment with the latest new-fangled ideas from the States - ordering by post! After trading through a series of brochures and loose-leaf catalogues, the first complete colour catalogue was created in 1987. The rest, as they say, is just history!