Bunnings is a good example of a brand where the logo itself has stayed relatively simple and stable, while the cultural meaning attached to it has grown enormously, largely thanks to something that has nothing to do with hardware at all: the sausage sizzle. They also have a Bunnings Workshop Community where they share their experience and help Australians online.
From Shipbuilding to Hardware
Bunnings began with brothers Robert and Arthur Bunning, who arrived in Western Australia from East London in 1886 originally planning to continue on to California, before taking on contracting work to build a new wing at the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum and staying put. Later generations of the family expanded the business into brick making and shipbuilding, notably building the “snake boats” used by the secretive Z Special Unit during World War II, before riding Australia’s post war housing boom into building supplies.
Struck by the rise of American style supermarkets, where goods sat on open shelves rather than behind a counter, the family opened the first modern Bunnings store in West Perth in 1961. The company transitioned from a private business to a joint stock company in 1952, setting up the structure that would support its later national expansion.
A Simple, Practical Redesign
Bunnings updated its visual identity in 1991, moving to the green, white and red colour palette still associated with the brand today, with clean, sharp lettering and a stylised green “B” as its main graphic element. The green tone chosen for the wordmark connects naturally with the company’s home, garden and outdoor positioning, while the sans-serif letterforms keep the overall look practical and approachable rather than overly polished.
Expanding East and the Warehouse Format
Bunnings moved into Australia’s eastern states in 1993, acquiring a Melbourne based hardware chain, and opened its first large format “big box” store, branded Bunnings Warehouse, in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine in 1994. A dedicated logo variant was developed for this format, pairing the main Bunnings wordmark with a bold red banner carrying the word “Warehouse” in a heavy stencil style typeface, giving the sign a strong, practical presence suited to a large format retail store.
The Sausage Sizzle That Became Part of the Brand
Here’s where Bunnings’ story becomes genuinely unusual for a hardware retailer. In 2004, the local Country Women’s Association, recognising the steady stream of hardware shoppers as a ready market, set up a charity cake stall outside the Sunshine store. That evolved, reportedly with local sporting clubs involved, into the sausage sizzle format now instantly recognisable across the country.
Bunnings leaned into the trend rather than resisting it, and today, with several hundred stores across Australia, a large share of the population lives within easy reach of one. The format proved successful enough that Bunnings brought it along when the company expanded into the United Kingdom in 2016, generating considerable media coverage in the process.
Why This Matters for Brand Recognition
The sausage sizzle isn’t part of Bunnings’ official logo, but it’s a genuinely useful case study in how a consistent visual identity, that same green and red palette, that same wordmark, can become a backdrop for something a community builds around a brand organically. Bunnings didn’t design the sausage sizzle as a marketing strategy, but by keeping its visual identity stable and consistent for decades, it gave the community something recognisable to build that culture around.
What Bunnings’ History Teaches Other Businesses
Bunnings’ logo itself hasn’t needed dramatic reinvention, the 1991 update has essentially carried the brand for over three decades. What’s instructive here is different: a stable, consistent visual identity gave room for something else, community goodwill, cultural association, brand loyalty, to build up around it over time. A logo doesn’t have to do all the work of building a brand on its own, sometimes its job is simply to stay consistent long enough for everything else to accumulate around it.
About Business Logo Design Australia
Business Logo Design Australia designs custom logos for businesses across the country, from new startups to established businesses going through a rebrand. Every project starts with a real conversation about your business, followed by original concepts, a set number of revisions, and a complete set of final files ready for web, print, signage and everyday use. Pricing is laid out clearly before you commit to a package, so you always know what’s included.
Building a Logo That Lasts
A stable, consistent logo gives your business room to build genuine goodwill over time, the way Bunnings has. Business Logo Design Australia designs with that kind of long term consistency in mind.