Tennessee-based hydraulics equipment supplier Bailey International has a global reach. Since we last spoke in July 2024, the company’s biggest milestone has been the unification of Bailey with its two subsidiary companies: Sure Grip Controls, a control grip manufacturer for electro-hydraulic applications; and Hydrolico, which makes hydraulic products and solutions, into one brand identity.
“We’ve created a single, stronger brand that simplifies the customer experience,” Senior Marketing Manager Brianna Henderson says, and this will allow Bailey International to provide comprehensive product portfolios more easily. The union has created the opportunity to combine the subsidiary websites into a single site, and Henderson’s team has developed a robust content strategy with handy resources such as a new catalogue.
Part of the company’s trade show schedule includes CONEXPO-CON/AGG and Work Truck Week in early March 2026. These events always give the team a chance to connect with customers and highlight how Bailey International is evolving as a company and brand to meet their needs.
Chief Executive Officer Ken Baker says that the company has also been hard at work on various initiatives to facilitate additional growth. First, Bailey has been expanding its work truck products, a keen area of focus in 2025 and 2026. The company has also solidified its sales structure with more technical support capabilities. While it has always had strong teams for engineering and technical support, it now has a formidable applications team in place for the customer-facing sales teams.
Finally, the company has undertaken a number of in-house green initiatives, such as moving to lower-VOC paints and testing paperless operations in its Knoxville location. Since the release of the company’s first-ever sustainability report, research supports the claim that Bailey has succeeded in reducing its emissions beyond industry standard benchmarks. This will serve as a strong foundation for future company projects in the sustainability realm, Baker tells us.
Indeed, thanks to the foundation laid over the past year by the business, “We have a lot of momentum to build on,” Henderson says.
When it comes to operations within the current industry landscape, the company remains cautiously optimistic. After a strong showing by Bailey in January, tariffs on North American businesses have caused a considerable market slow-down. The overall market is working to adjust, with sectors like agriculture, construction, and forestry struggling in their own ways.
Amidst such disruptions, Bailey International is continuing to find success by diversifying—concentrating on opportunity capture and better technology additions for customers, which has helped it stay ahead. “We want the world to know that Bailey offers everything from hydraulic cylinders and pumps to joysticks, arm rests, and electronic controls,” says Henderson. As a result, Bailey is projecting modest growth for 2026. Ever greater numbers of clients are becoming believers in a business that provides for them at every step of their projects. The company refers to this as being a ‘fingertip-to-tooltip’ company, and this approach has had a significant impact.
Going into the remainder of 2025 and beyond, Bailey International will be working hard to continue unifying its brand on the execution, sales-as-a-service, and engineering sides, while emphasizing cross-selling as much as possible, providing hydraulics and electro-hydraulics customers with the other items they need, like joysticks, controls, and sensors, for example.
Product expansion means an ongoing expansion of training and sales in the work truck market as well. Historically, much of the business has been related to off-road operations like forestry, construction, or agricultural equipment, so Bailey has a good chance of making an impact on that market, offering customers the technical solutions and products needed.
Along with general training for the sales and support teams on the technological side, the company is also investing heavily in strategies to increase its visibility and traffic through AI overviews and generative engine optimization initiatives. Henderson says that Bailey aims to be at the forefront of this burgeoning field, making the company easier to interact with and more accessible.
Baker is proud of the company’s efforts in AI, both customer-facing and internal, which is something he is passionate about and directly involved in. There have been setbacks, which is to be expected in a field as new as this; however, further exploration into generative AI has met with success in areas like lead and content generation, customer-facing activities, and even in testing and proofing for operational elements.
Another major milestone that the company will be hitting very soon is breaking ground on a new electronics facility in Victoria, British Columbia. This will allow the company’s electronics teams to come together under one roof and will further accelerate innovation in its custom control solutions. Henderson is excited because the move will give the engineers, designers, and production teams more space and the tools they need to propel new ideas forward in the electronics division. After a groundbreaking ceremony earlier this year, the facility is expected to open within the next 15 months.
Bailey International is also celebrating another historic occasion: 50 years in business. While Brianna Henderson has been with the company for about two years, one of the biggest lessons learned from her perspective as a marketer is the importance of sales, marketing, and customer experience unification and harmonization. This is something that the company is very excited about, and it has recently brought on a new Vice President of Sales, Scott Andrews, to align key performance indicators and to push toward the seamless hand-off process that every marketing and sales team dreams about.
Having been at Bailey International for 17 years and counting, Ken Baker believes that the leading hallmark of this company is its emphasis on excellence in customer service. The team is always honest about what it can and cannot do for a client and offers tremendous flexibility in terms of stocking and supply as well as engineering services, technical support, and marketing support. “A lot of companies in today’s market focus on enhancing their internal operations,” Baker says; Bailey International, on the other hand, aims to optimize its customers’ operations first, a belief that has supported 50 years of operations for this dynamic company.
