BUSINESS
GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT Penny Bailey is the founder of Bailey Solutions, which specialises in library management systems. She is a quiet innovator and one of the most interesting humans I’ve ever met, says Kate Bendix, MDHUB Member “When I was a kid, I took out my full quota of books from the library every week and devoured the lot. Books gave me the foundation for a life of curiosity allowing me to flourish. Books are a conduit to so much more outside the four walls of a library.” Starting out as an academic librarian, she moved into setting up libraries within law firms where none had previously existed. “Their libraries were two dimensional and there was no proper library
system designed for them.” So Penny taught herself programming and developed one. I told you she was interesting. A few libraries and programme iterations later, Penny was forced to leave her job after being sexually harassed to the point of quitting. A single mum-of-two with a mortgage, she had no option but to crack on and set up shop as a library consultant, and offered freelance programming services to businesses.
Penny had been a member of the ❛❛ MDHUB since 2006, and the peer group advice and support proved invaluable 54
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It was a success, but writing tailored computer programs didn’t make financial sense. Rehashing the same product was costly, time consuming and annoying. So, she repackaged her library system as a standalone product and voilà, an entrepreneur was born and, in typical entrepreneurial style, she went against convention from the star t. As a customer herself, Penny was sick to the back teeth of being held hostage by a salesperson every time she enquired after a service, so made her pricing transparent. It was 1999 and no one did this. But as most Brits would rather open their mouths for a root canal than ask “How much?”, business boomed.
