Interview by Kara Larson

Photography provided by Anna & Nathanael Bailey

Conducted in collaboration with American Craft Council

Are you both from Minnesota? How did you meet?

Anna: I grew up in the Twin Cities, White Bear Lake area, and my husband grew up in the Mound-Orono area. We went to school at UMD and grew to love the city and stayed put after we graduated. We knew we wanted to raise a family here.

What did you study in school?

Anna: I graduated with a teaching degree, so I had an elementary education degree and a music minor, so I was a music teacher for a year, and then I was a third grade teacher for a couple years.

Nathanael: I was going for business, and I actually ended up getting a job at a collision repair shop up here to pay my college bills and rent. I really liked it, so I just continued doing that for my career.

Interesting combos!

Anna: Yes! It’s funny where life takes you. It’s certainly been an adventure.

Do you incorporate your teaching experience into any aspect of Bailey Builds?

Anna: When I was on my own in the business, I started building a lot of furniture—that’s how I got into woodworking. So I used to teach classes to women on how to build simple things like benches, little DIY projects. It was really fun; I really enjoyed it. We’ve done a few in our new space, but honestly it’s hard to do the level of artwork production we do now and then switch gears to use the same space for workshops.

I’d imagine since a lot of your work is quite large scale and the equipment is too, space alone would be challenging. Thinking about space and process, do you have a lot of works in progress in the workshop?

Anna: Oh yeah, a ton. We’ve really learned to work in stages in the studio, and thinking about what the wisest course of action is considering our space and tools when we’re creating, when we’re salvaging the lumber, cutting the lumber, prepping the lumber, putting a piece together. It’s just a long process. And we now have employees that help us in the production of it, which is wonderful because it puts everyone in their sweet spot. I can focus more on the actual designing and putting together, but I don’t have to prep the lumber and finish the piece.

I’m guessing for a lot of years you were wearing all the hats, so it must feel good to just give away one of them!

Anna: Yes, it’s really wonderful! As we’re talking right now, we have our team member Morgan here with us in the studio, and she’s marketing for us, so she’s taking all the pictures and preparing for Mother’s Day. We feel so fortunate to be at this place now where we have team members that are so integral and such a great part of the process.

Have you been able to keep your team employed at this point? Overall, how has the past month changed the way you’re doing business and creating?

Nathanael: We’ve been thinking for a long time about some ways to diversify, and it’s actually forced us or given us the opportunity to jump into those things. We’ve been thinking about doing a YouTube channel, and we have just never figured out how best to do it. And we’re not good at the technical aspects of video making or editing, but we knew we could make some cool content. So we decided to try it. And we knew that Morgan could do pretty much anything we talk about, so we asked her what she thought of shifting her work into video editing since we can’t make artwork right now. She’s like, “Sure, I can give it a try!” So she switched over to that for a few weeks.

Anna: We’ve been really fortunate because when we saw the pandemic coming and people were starting to close their businesses, we had a lot of inventory stacked up, so we were able to have a sale. We anticipated that we might need to have some cashflow for the future, so we worked together as a team to get the sale live and to ship out artworks. We ended up having a sale that provided our payroll for all of our employees for a few weeks, maybe even a month. And then by that time, we were able to apply for the Payroll PPP loan. So we’ve been really fortunate—our whole team is intact and we didn’t have to lay anybody off.

I think it’s really great that you were able to think quickly and for the future with that sale.

Anna: There was talk in the artist community about art fairs shutting down around the country, and because shows are a big part of our income, we thought, “Okay, if this is the trend, we need to figure out how to bring in some extra income to at least get us through a little while.”

And so many artists are struggling because they don’t have a website live, or they’re not selling on Etsy, and we already had that in place, and so we feel fortunate that we didn’t have to launch a website and then sell on it. We already had that system in place, so it was easier for us to utilize that and leverage that for the loss of revenue in other areas.

Totally. Like the pivot for you wasn’t as difficult for you.

Nathanael: Right, and as business owners, we’re always creating and coming up with new ideas, so in a way, as hard as it is sometimes with everything that has happened, it’s fun for us to do new things, too.

How has the pandemic affected the rhythm of your work?

Nathanael: Before the pandemic hit, we had a bunch of commissions, and we were trying to get them finished and shipped quickly because we sensed that things were probably going to be shutting down with the stay at home orders. We sensed it was coming, so we worked really hard to get as many commissions off our list as we could. And once the stay at home orders were in place, we weren’t able to go to the shop and work, so as much as we wanted to work and hustle and get as much done as we could, we still had to step back and say, “Okay, we just can’t do that now.”

Anna: Yeah, we kind of went full bore until we couldn’t. And then honestly, we kind of crashed. Which was what we needed. I think as a creative and an introvert, I definitely need more space and time, and it doesn’t even necessarily have to be in the studio; it just needs to be in my life for me to feel inspired and refueled. We were at home with our kids, so a lot of those first weeks at home we spent recouping from all that work. I just needed physically to rest and let my body rest and let my mind rest.

Nathanael: And it was super stressful trying to figure out funding, too. We’d get up in the morning and work for a while, and then all of a sudden it’s 2:30 in the afternoon and we’re just exhausted and we’d look at each other and think, “What in the world?” But it was so stressful thinking through—you know, you want to plan about what you’re going to do, but it’s hard to plan when you have no idea what’s going on. So that was super stressful and exhausting, that part of it, too for about two weeks. And then after that, we were able to think through it.

Anna: Our business is very diversified, so we have a store, an AirBnB, a building we own, and then we have a studio we rent, so we’re thinking about the artwork, but also, how do we shift our business while thinking about the families we employ? It was overwhelming thinking about not only our family, but also our team and their families.

Nathanael: Our goal was always to make sure that we could keep everybody on. It was great because the people we have working for us now switched their roles up and they were willing to do something different. That helped us stay afloat, because they were willing to be flexible. It seems like lots of people across the United States have changed their roles in big ways.

Zooming out into a broader community, with a real sense of physical distance between all of us, what sorts of connections, conversations, or feelings do you have around the maker community right now?

Anna: I have definitely sensed and seen community in different places. I’ve connected with a couple makers encouraging them to diversify their business in a different way. One of the makers that was in our store, a ceramic artist, came in and grabbed her work out of our space to sell it online, so I was talking to her about that process. So I definitely think that is going on a lot more—makers sharing information they’ve learned with each other to be able to encourage other makers in areas they haven’t ventured yet like online sales or commission work or pre-ordering or gift certificates.

Have you felt a heightened sense of encouragement or support on social media?

Anna: Yes, definitely. People doing shout outs and sharing how they’re supporting local businesses. I know our business has been tagged a bunch in posts. Like when we had our sale, holy cow. We got so much support from people who are customers, local makers, local business owners—it was great.

Nathanael: And we have the opportunity to support other makers because we have about 40 other makers in our Bailey Builds & Friends store, too. We’ve had multiple people messaging us about whether we’re going to sell things out of the store from other makers and have them listed online. And actually it’s been really cool to have the opportunity to share these other makers’ websites so they’re getting 100% of the profit.

Anna: We made the conscious decision to point people to the artists and buy directly from them at least until we can open up the store again.

Are there any projects you want people to know about? Anything you’re working on that you want to share?

Anna: Because the governor just opened up manufacturing, we just started going back to the studio. It’s tricky because we want to be safe, and we want our employees to be safe. But we have been back in the studio this week and it felt great. We have been able to work on a small collection for Mother’s Day, and we’re going to be launching that on Saturday for Mother’s Day, and then we’ll be able to get things shipped out soon for that.

It’s wild, right before the pandemic, we were in the midst of converting our old studio into an expansion of our retail space, so that’s a business project that got put on hold. It’s going to be an expansion of our retail that will also be for community use, which we’re really excited about. Because of the pandemic and social distancing, gatherings will have to be a lot smaller and pared down and more meaningful, and so, we’re going to be offering our old studio space as a community get-together space.

Nathanael: So for like business meetings, or have you heard of micro-weddings before?

I have not!

Nathanael: That’s actually one of the new trends for 2020.

Anna: Even before the pandemic hit, people were looking to celebrate smaller in more intimate spaces. We have a bride and groom coming today to look at the space because they had their wedding scheduled for June and they aren’t able to have a big crowd anymore, so they’re looking for a more intimate space. We’re excited to offer this.

Nathanael: A lot of these things we were working into our business and thinking about already, and it just showed that we were going in the right direction.

Anna: We’re super passionate about the community and being a space where people gather and come together and celebrate—so we love that we can have a space to facilitate that. We’re grateful.

See more of Anna and Nathanael’s work here: https://baileybuilds.com/

Learn more about American Craft Council here: https://craftcouncil.org/

Anna & Nathanael Bailey of Bailey Builds