Seed companies selling under other names

[veggiechicken]

Just noticed that Kings Seeds and Mr Digwell seeds are the same company. A packet of radish seeds from Mr Digwell "traditional and trusted" costs 5p more for the same quantity of seeds. Must be the image of the man in a flat cap that puts the price up!!
Do you know of other seed companies that sell seeds under different names?
Just wondering how many suppliers there actually are.

[mothhawk]

Unwins and Marshalls are the same company too.

[veggiechicken]

Didn't know that MH - thanks
Will we end up with one company with a dozen different names?

[bearded bloke]

T&M bag & sell Seeds of Italy IIRC

[starloc]

Its the same with most products

I run a company making chemicals, we sell under quite a lot of different names ourselves, sometimes the same product in 2 ranges may be the same (but not often) , but we also pack many other brands of product of very similar spec for various people who sell against us as a competitor, we only use the highest spec under our name, but theres not a lot of difference between all he others.

Its easier for us to manufacture and pack ours and other peoples than for someone else to do just there own , as costs for regulations these days are high we can remove registration costs from them, saving them money

If a company wants to close for any reason, we often buy the trading name as its selling anyway as well as ours, so we then end up with another brand name and higher sales

I imagine seeds are the same, they all need to bee registered as a supplier/packer/producer and the varieties need to be registered as well

[Kirk]

Same for compost, I was a little North of Huntingdon one day and passed a compost producer, parked outside were 5 lorries stocking up on bags of compost, each lorry was a different brand name.

I would expect they also supplied to other outlets also.

As to seeds it tends to be Wilkinsons or 2 small suppliers I use that are really I suspect a "cottage" industry, but they do a nice and often slightly different range of seeds. I will stick with them and ignore the larger companies.

[seasprout]

I believe Dobbies were bought out by Suttons.