Travel broadens the mind and revives the spirit with fresh perspectives, which is exactly what happened for the team at Halliday + Baillie. Inspired by their recent travels to international markets, the Halliday + Baillie team returned to New Zealand brimming with ideas to enhance their existing range and develop new products.
“Our founder, Marcus, is a creative by nature; he’s at his happiest when sketching and designing new products for our range. When we were travelling around the United States with distributors and resellers, we saw a lot of opportunities to enhance our products to better suit the needs of our clients, which gave Marcus some brilliant ideas for new and existing products,” says Cameron Allison of Halliday + Baillie.
“When we were travelling around the United States with distributors and resellers, we saw a lot of opportunities to enhance our products to better suit the needs of our clients, which gave Marcus some brilliant ideas for new and existing products.”
The next chapter for Halliday + Baillie
A renewed focus on product development means studying the evolution of architectural features, like doors and windows, and making adjustments to their products’ mechanisms to best serve the current and future market.
“We want to be leaders in the hardware industry, and we’re able to support that vision by designing and manufacturing all our products in Auckland,” Cameron explains. “Our hands-on approach to product development starts with Marcus drawing the concept, then it’s taken down the road to our engineering team, who transform the idea into an engineering drawing. After the engineers work on the concept, it gets manufactured, finished, and assembled, ready for the customer.”
In addition to revised product development, the team is expanding their soft range — a curved iteration of their beloved square-edged hardware.
“A version of the soft range has been available in-market for a while now, but we’ve been working to build it out so customers can have a full house of curved-edge hardware if that’s what they’re looking for.”
Designing for timelessness
At the helm of Halliday + Baillie’s product development, founder Marcus is determined to maintain the business’s reputation for beautiful, innovative hardware.
“One word I keep coming back to in my design process is ‘timeless’. As an idea percolates through various stages, timelessness becomes a kind of touchstone. I ask myself: Will I turn around in ten years and still love it? If the answer is yes, then I know I’m heading in the right direction,” Marcus says.
“We’re driven by innovation and a desire to push boundaries — but not in pursuit of short-term trends in colour, shape, or style. Instead, our focus is on creating designs that will stand the test of time. Take our stair brackets, for example — the innovation lies in transforming them from a ubiquitous, off-the-shelf item into a desirable, design-led feature.”
By renewing their focus on product development, enhancing their range to serve the evolving requirements of the architecture industry, and introducing new additions to their collection, Halliday + Baillie are well placed to collaborate with design professionals on all their hardware needs.
“We’ve recently increased our in-house resources, which allows us more time to meet with clients, understand their projects, and gain valuable feedback from the industry. We’re able to improve our product development because of the feedback and insight we receive from the industry, so those relationships are really important to us.”
