Duluth small business rebuilds after accident

ST PAUL, Minn. — A Duluth small business was scrambling after their shipping container company accidentally sold their state fair container.

“They painted the container. They thought it was their stock, and they accidentally sold it to another company, and they shipped it down to that company,” said Nathanael Bailey, co-owner of Bailey Builds.

His wife, Anna, started the company in 2015, and he joined full-time two years later. He said they create wall hanging wood art, he said Anna calls wood mosaics. Their wood art was recently featured on Love Is Blind, when the show was filmed in Minneapolis.

They travel to art fairs all over the country, but they have a custom-designed building for the state fair. They pay a monthly fee to store it at the shipping container company’s website when they’re not using it.

Thursday night, he received a phone call that made their heads spin.

“They ended up calling me pretty late in the day, and they said we have good news, but we have a lot of bad news,” he said. “The bad news is we accidentally sold your container.”

Bailey said he didn’t know how to respond.

“It was comical but super stressful, but it’s like what are the chances, two weeks before the Minnesota State Fair opens, our container is sold and driven down to Iowa,” Bailey said.

He said they immediately started to think about backup plans.

“Do we rent a tent, do we find a contracting company to emergency build the same building again for us?” Bailey said. “Worst case scenario, we put a white tent, which isn’t, it’s not our brand. Our brand is to bring something to the state fair and anywhere we go that people notice.”

This is the company’s 5th year at the fair, and it’s something he said they can’t miss.

“It’s 20% of income for our year for our business,” he said.

He said the building has modular sections so they can take it down each year and store it in a 20-foot container.

“There was a lot that went into it, and we bought it at the peak of COVID, so lumber prices were just through the roof,” he said.

If everything fell through, he was worried about how this would impact his staff, but luckily, the company made it right and delivered the container back to Minnesota.

“There’s so many new things coming this year, and it would have been really sad not to have this building to sell out of,” he said.

Bailey said the company has been great to work with and said he knows they wouldn’t intentionally sell it.

He said the company is looking into how it happened, so it doesn’t happen again.

Bailey said he’s just happy to have his fair set up back.

“Honestly, everything looked great,” Bailey said.

He started setting up a day later than expected, but he said he’s grateful family and friends traveled from Duluth and North Dakota to help him build it.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “It’s a lot of heavy things they lift… they’re helping in the rain and we’re all getting soaked and nobody’s complaining and they’re just all in it together,” he said.

Bailey Builds is located at the North End of the fair near Giggles’ Campfire Grill.