History
Origins
Queensberry dates back to 1969 and Heather Baugh’s handcraft leather business in Auckland, New Zealand. From the very start, her focus was on two things:
• Her customer’s experience and memory of their special days, especially weddings.
• The pleasure of possessing beautiful objects that reflect and express them.
That focus is at the very core of Queensberry’s vision and purpose today.
But to understand our business and what drives us you must go deeper than albums, printing and software. It's not about albums. In the end it's not even about photography – it's about the story those images convey.
Heather's insight was that we don't make albums, we serve those "strangers in the viewfinder" by crafting their memories into a treasured possession that tells their story, and that they can enjoy, reflect upon and share forever.
Foundations
Heather made albums from the start, but it was our partnership with photographers that created a strong foundation for our business.
Realising that both they and their customers wanted to present their images at their very best, photographers began to seek Heather out. Ever since then we have spoken of three main players in Queensberry’s world: the customer who’s special moments and stories we celebrate, the photographer who captures them, and we at Queensberry who transform them into a beautiful object so they can be remembered forever.
Heather’s handcrafted books were very popular.
By the mid ’80s Heather’s husband Ian had become involved in the growing enterprise and the growing family business was shipping albums to Australia.
Over the years Heather was also proud to be involved in special commissions for Indira Gandhi, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Pope John Paul, Princess Diana, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Sir Edmund Hillary, and many more since.
But by the early ’90s Heather and Ian were restless. Photographers needed albums they could customise to suit the particular photos a client bought, but manufacturers’ production and stocking problems made it very difficult for them to do that and also keep their products fresh and up to date.
At the time we described wedding albums as “the industry that style forgot”.
Transformation
Driven by the desire to present the magic of a wedding day in the most exceptional way, in 1994 Heather and Ian revolutionised the album business by resolving that, from then on, they would make every album to order. They launched their break-through Pagemount presentation system and promised to “liberate photographers from album makersʼ constraints and tired designs forever”. Now photographers would be free to design albums to suit their images, and we could deliver contemporary products with high design values.