“Throughout, we’ve held true to Heather and Ian’s core values, that Queensberry is a company that succeeds by helping its clients succeed. We constantly remind ourselves that our business isn’t making albums, it’s helping our clients sell photography.”

Clockwise from bottom left: Alexandria, Adrienne, Sonya and Stephen (Alex’s and Charlotte’s Mum and Dad) Heather, Charlotte and Ian. (Heather designed our first albums in 1972 and remains our principal designer). Image copyright ©2006 Johannes van Kan and Jo Grams.

A family company

Queensberry’s had its origins in Heather Baugh’s handcraft leather business, which dates from 1972. Professional photographers began asking Heather for custom-made albums to present their work, and over time photo albums became the core of her business.

By the mid ’80s Heather’s husband Ian had become involved in the growing enterprise and the company had begun exporting to Australia, where handcrafted leather albums had a unique appeal.

By the early ’90s Heather and Ian were feeling restless. Every year studios decorated their walls with fresh images in new, contemporary frames, but wedding albums remained stuck in the past. It was easy to see why. Photographers needed an album they could customise to suit the particular photos a client bought, but manufacturers’ production and stocking constraints made that difficult.

A revolution 

In 1994 Heather and Ian revolutionised their business. From then on they made every album to order. They launched the Pagemount presentation system and promised to “liberate you from album makers’ constraints and tired designs forever” and to “offer fresh product every year to keep you ahead”.

Soon, not a single shelf of finished product remained in their facility. Queensberry’s clients benefited from a dramatically increased range of sizes, shapes, materials and colours and within 18 months the traditional products had all but disappeared.

A new generation 

In 1996 the next generation became involved (Stephen, Adrienne and Sonya, Stephen’s wife). Adrienne gravitated into administration, operations and HR, Sonya into customer service, Stephen into systems and IT, and they began to lay the groundwork for a major expansion of the business.

Queensberry installed the first computerised mat cutter in the album business and Stephen developed radical new in-house software to drive it (one of many IT projects). Clients could suddenly design pages on the fly, sketch them on paper and fax them to Queensberry for creation.

Internet pioneers 

As internet pioneers, the company also began to attract orders from the far side of the globe, prompting exploratory tours of the US, Canada and UK in mid-2000. Being able to tell the wedding story in an album that you could design page by page to suit the images was a radical innovation, and lead to immediate success.

Queensberry responded to this demand by developing new business systems in-house so we could do business internationally but still say “We’re local” - billing clients in their own currency and delivering promptly door to door. Instead of distributors we set up international toll-free services so we could talk to our clients personally.

Three quarters of Queensberry's sales now come from the northern hemisphere.

Since 2000 Queensberry has continued to develop its products and services.

In 2001 we released Photojunction, the leading album design software program, and in 2003 we made the application available to album suppliers everywhere.

In 2004 the company bought Chromatek, New Zealand’s iconic wedding and portrait pro lab, in order to deliver albums filled with the best possible printing to clients around the world. Doing so made possible even more refined products and created the possibility of eliminating almost all backroom work from our clients’ studios.

Throughout, we’ve held true to Heather and Ian’s core values, that Queensberry is a company that succeeds by helping its clients succeed. We constantly remind ourselves that our business isn’t making albums, it’s helping our clients sell photography.

Where did the name come from?

Heather and Ian won’t talk about the origins of the company name Queensberry, but say they like the connotations of equity and fair dealing that spring from the “Queensberry Rules”.

When reminded that the Queensberry Rules govern boxing, they refuse to agree that this might suggest the family fought a lot as they grew the business, but fought fair!