Award-Winning Family Business Uses Social Media To Buck The Trend

Despite reports to the contrary coming from retailers across the country, the DIY industry in particular, one local family business has found that a radical change of direction in their product range and marketing has seen significant growth for them this year.

This has also had a significant impact on the local community through the huge number of people that they now employ.

Brother and sister company directors, Matthew (29) and Katie (32) are the third generation of the local Bailey family to run the family business, originally started by their grandparents as a car repair garage just under 50 years ago.

The couple have just won the title of Family Business of the Year 2019 in the prestigious Herefordshire Business Awards.

Baileys DIY, with branches in Abergavenny and Ross-on-Wye, were initially DIY and home improvement stores, but noticed a decline in DIY sales shortly after taking over the Abergavenny based business, located just behind their BP petrol garage in Brecon Road, 7 years ago.

“The DIY market has changed dramatically over the seven years that we’ve been involved.” Said company director, Matthew Bailey. “We’ll never forget our DIY roots, it still makes up over 50% of our business, but we’re constantly searching to buy in clearance stock of food, drinks, pet food, animal feed, cleaning materials and more, at low prices so we can pass on the savings to our customers.”

Matthew Bailey ‘struts his stuff’ in an innovative twice-weekly promotional video on Facebook and YouTube, often off the back of a lorry delivering stock to one of his stores, to tell potential customers about his latest deals.

“It’s proving to be a formula that really works for us and our customers absolutely love saving money on day-to-day food and drink items. Within minutes of us posting our videos people turn up to buy the deals…..often before we’ve even got it off the delivery lorry! Millions of people have viewed our promotional videos over the last 12 months and thousands and thousands of people engage with us every week.”

From just a handful of staff 7 years ago the Bailey family business now provides employment for over 90 local people and has exciting plans for continued growth.

Source : Insight DIY Team and Baileys DIY

Image : Company directors Matthew and Katie Bailey are driving the family business forward.

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