Mark and Sally Bailey met in an auction house in Pontypridd in south Wales 38 years ago, bidding against each other on the same brass and iron bed. Sally won the bid and convinced Mark to help her transport the bed back to her top-floor flat in Penarth. As a thank you, that evening she took Mark out for dinner on Penarth pier. Four months later, they were married. “When you know, you know,” says Sally.
The makings of a successful business partnership (the shared aesthetic, a willingness to act on instinct) were there from the start. The couple went on to found Baileys, an award-winning homeware brand that has evolved over three decades. “We’ve always thought naturally,” explains Sally. “Our philosophy has always been plain, simple, useful – and that hasn’t changed.”
Before they met, Sally had trained as an interior designer in Cardiff and Mark, who studied furniture design, owned an antique shop in south Wales. They began to renovate houses together. “If we couldn’t find the things we wanted, we’d get them made,” Sally explains. They soon realised there was a market for the fixtures and fittings they were commissioning, so Mark turned his shop into the first iteration of Baileys: a homeware store specialising in utilitarian goods and one-off antique objects.
In the mid-80s, the couple moved to Herefordshire with Sally’s parents before starting a family of their own. They converted an old engine shed near Ross-on-Wye and the brand took off. “We’ve always had quite a natural, pared-back look,” says Sally. In an era of flounces and decorative stencilling, Baileys went against the grain. “I think people thought we were a bit odd, but that’s been our aesthetic right from the start.”
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
