Sliding doors
Marcus Halliday may say he got into the architectural hardware business by accident but with good taste and a creative spark he’s carved a niche.
Sunday, July 29 2007 || BY Caitlin Sykes
TO LOOK at Marcus Halliday you’d suspect he’d always been the creative type: the dark-framed glasses, the slightly wild hair, the cool threads.
Turns out he has a background in finance and got into designing and supplying architectural hardware “by accident”, when he couldn’t find the right door handles while renovating.
“I think I got to 38 and realised I was creative,” says Halliday. “You don’t leave school and the teacher tells you, ‘you’re a creative, off you go’.”
His business, Halliday and Baillie, has carved a lucrative niche supplying everything from door handles and window latches, to stair brackets and door stops for high-end residential and commercial buildings.
As well as importing architectural hardware, about half of the company’s business now comes from selling 26 of its own products, with the main focus on hardware for stairs and sliding doors. All of these products are designed by Halliday and made in New Zealand.
Marrying form and function through good design is the hallmark. Architect Paul Clarke, of Crosson Clarke Carnachan Architects, says Halliday is “incredibly design driven” and his products have a timeless quality, which means they’ll still look good — and work — in 20 years. “He’s looking for solutions to existing issues that people have and is finding unique ways of resolving them with style,” says Clarke.
About two-thirds of Halliday and Baillie’s annual $3–$4 million turnover comes from its New Zealand operation, and the remaining third from its Australian business. Exports account for about 10% of New Zealand sales. About 40% of exports are sold online via the company’s website and the rest through four US distributors and one in Canada.
All staff are employed in sales and marketing, with five in New Zealand and three in Sydney. While New Zealand sales are “fairly steady” an increasing proportion are coming from the company’s own designs rather than imported product, Halliday says, and he views offshore sales as the driver of the company’s future growth. Australia is growing at about 20–25% annually and export sales through the New Zealand office are growing about 100% annually (albeit from a small base). Halliday hopes that within two to three years, US and Australian sales will account for about 80% of the company’s overall business.
A former government stockbroker, Halliday started the business with his ex-wife Gilly Baillie (hence the company name) in 1995. They were renovating a couple of old villas in Auckland’s tony Herne Bay and couldn’t find the right door handles at the right price. So they decided to import some.
“Go back 15 years in the market and New Zealand was below Russia; you could get one tap, one door handle, one macaroni cheese,” says Halliday wryly.
They began with door hardware — primarily the German brand FSB, for which the company is a master agent in New Zealand and Australia — and bathroom fittings from Europe. The initial plan was to wholesale the products, however existing hardware merchants told them the product was too expensive, too ‘different’ and wasn’t always compatible with other hardware. So instead they decided to source other complementary hardware (lock mechanisms that worked with the door handles they were importing, for example) and market directly to architects and designers, through sales reps and advertising in architectural magazines.
“The idea was to become the best in the market at what we do at the top end of the market, which we achieved in the late 90s,” says Halliday.
The best, however, was not always good enough. Some of the available European products were unsuitable for New Zealand construction, and over the years Halliday gained feedback from clients about particular products they wanted that were unavailable.
Spying those gaps in the market, around 2002 the company decided to start manufacturing its own products. It began with two: a window handle, and a stair bracket used to hold up ballustrading.
Manufacturing is outsourced to three Auckland manufacturers and although the company has found an arrangement that works well for them, dealing with the Kiwi ‘she’ll be right’ attitude to quality and finish has at times been a challenge, says Halliday. “We’re taking coals to Newcastle so we’ve got to have quality. If the colour’s not right or the finish is no good then it’s a reject,” he says. “Forget number 8 wire.”
About five years ago the company set up a Sydney office with one staff member, who set about knocking on doors and establishing the service presence that Halliday says has been crucial to success.
At the beginning of 2003 the company also began investigations into the US. With the help of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise funding, it enlisted the services of Jennifer Pownall, of business relationship manage-ment company Articulate — a former editor with the Trends stable of design magazines who had good contacts with architects Stateside. Pownall met the architects, asking them which hardware merchants they used and who they would recommend the company show its product to. She then visited about 20 merchants, two of which the company picked up as initial US distributors.
One of those distributors, Liz Cherco of Chicago-based hardware merchant The Ironmonger, says Halliday and Baillie’s products, particularly its handrail brackets, are “taking off like wildfire”.
“Customers love the simplicity of the design, the pricing has been a good plus, and they like the finish,” Cherco says.
Halliday and Baillie has since taken a softly-softly approach to developing the US market, relying on ads in architecture magazines and word-of-mouth to lead more architects and hardware distributors to the products. “Architects like to discover products,” says Halliday. “They like to look in the back of magazines, find something new and say ‘my client will love this’. It’s a discovery thing.”
He envisages adding another 15 to 20 products to the Halliday and Baillie line, and would eventually like to become the company architects naturally turn to when they need a solution for stairs and sliding doors.
But with a niche product that’s sold on quality and design, rather than price, Halliday’s happy to take what he calls “a long slow road” to developing the business. The large multinationals that dominate the architectural hardware industry are about “safety in design and mediocrity”, says Halliday, but as a small company, Halliday and Baillie can take risks and innovate, he says, “largely because we have to”.
Looks like those creative talents will continue to be put to good use.