Coulson & Macleod. We’re not the only couple who work well together. Are you a couple in busi­ness? Do tell us your story if you are.

Here’s some inspir­a­tional couples run­ning great com­pan­ies and a little insight into how they do it together…

Mr & Mrs Smith — foun­ded by Tamara Heber-Percy & James Lohan

One ques­tion posed to them dur­ing an inter­view was, “What chal­lenges do you face work­ing together as hus­band and wife?”

James, “The key for me is hav­ing dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent roles in the office.”

Tamara, “At the moment we’re both try­ing to bal­ance the growth of our busi­ness with look­ing after our two young chil­dren. I do think that a suc­cess­ful work­ing rela­tion­ship between part­ners is reli­ant on hav­ing a stable and secure rela­tion­ship at home. We never let busi­ness prob­lems inter­fere with fam­ily time, but when there are excit­ing pro­spects on the hori­zon it’s great to be able to talk to each other, as it is the live­li­hood of our whole family.”

Toast — foun­ded by Jes­sica & Jamie Seaton

Jes­sica, “I look at the struc­ture of the col­lec­tion, the shoot, the cata­logue, and Jamie shapes busi­ness decisions with me. There’s a lot of cros­sover. My strength is the over­view, the way things fit together, and Jamie’s is detail and rig­or­ous perfection.”

Agent Pro­vocateur — foun­ded by Ser­ena Rees & Joe Corré (now divorced)

Joe, “We get requests from all over the world. We’ve had depart­ment stores approach­ing us for years, say­ing, ‘Can you do some­thing in our store?’ But whether we can recre­ate in a depart­ment store the atmo­sphere of our shops, and that intim­ate and per­sonal exper­i­ence of our cus­tom­ers, is a prob­lem. Because if we can’t do that, then we won’t do it at all. We don’t have any great mis­sion to expand into every out­let we can.”

Firm­dale Hotels — foun­ded by Kit & Tim Kemp

Kit, “I think we would be unem­ploy­able any­where else, as we’re both perfectionists.”

Their roles in the part­ner­ship are well defined. Tim finds the loc­a­tions (Soho Hotel is on the site of a former NCP car park) and does the sums. Kit designs the interi­ors and has an eclectic eye for detail that ensures no two rooms are the same. The secret of their suc­cess is know­ing how to spend.

Kit, “We have never skimped, even dur­ing an eco­nomic downturn.”

Baileys Home and Garden — foun­ded by Sally & Mark Bailey

Sally, “We’ve always been into antiques and recyc­ling, and the busi­ness blends the two together. When we star­ted, we ploughed a lone fur­row, but mix­ing old and new and recyc­ling has become very fash­ion­able and we’ve seen the interest in what we do grow enorm­ously over the last few years.”

Mark, “I prefer things to be worn and lived-in and Sally goes along with me. I love things that are well made and have some integ­rity, hon­esty and heritage.”

Their own home is a con­ver­ted barn next to their shop, work­shop, and café.

the Rug Com­pany — Suz­anne & Christopher Sharp

“What do you enjoy most about being an entrepreneur?”

Chris, “As I con­sider myself unem­ploy­able, I have little choice! I love the vari­ety of what we do and, right or wrong, I like mak­ing my own decisions. Trav­el­ling, meet­ing inter­est­ing people and work­ing in a craft I feel pas­sion­ately about, I don’t think it gets much better.”

“Any­thing that comes out of a pas­sion just works.” Now that sounds very Coulson Macleod.

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• Art Has No Boundaries
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Just sit­ting here flick­ing and swoon­ing through our new purchase,

simple home is by Mark and Sally Bailey of the utterly lovely store Baileys Home and Garden.

The blurb on the back says, “One of the most inspir­ing interi­ors books we have seen in ages, giv­ing a room-by-room tour of spaces that embrace the Baileys’ love of the well-worn, the dis­tressed, the aban­doned and the recycled” Tele­graph Magazine.  And I agree whole-heartedly.