Bradford Hardware. Vancouver, since 2009.

West First

It started as a test.

Before committing fully, we wanted to know whether Vancouver actually had a market for the kind of decorative hardware we wanted to sell — and whether starting the business was, in fact, a spectacularly bad idea.

We kept it small, didn’t spend a fortune, and figured we’d find out. Apparently, it wasn’t.

“Wes was largely navigating the business on his own. I was pregnant, very sick, and spent a fair amount of time lying on the bathroom floor.”Simone

West 2nd

Committing, properly.

We knew enough by then to commit properly, so we moved to West 2nd. We opened the showroom ten days before Parker was born — which was objectively terrible timing.

West 2nd gave us more space, more brands and considerably more to manage. Bradford was becoming a real business, whether we felt particularly prepared for that or not.

Eventually, we had help. Brody joined us and is now our showroom manager, and Irene — Wes’s mom — became part of Bradford too.

“I wish we had more photos from this time, but when you’re changing your baby on a packing table and wondering whether the gamble is going to pay off, it doesn’t exactly feel like something to memorialize.”Simone

The Armoury District

Where we ended up mattered.

The Armoury District didn’t become a design community by accident. A lot of the credit belongs to Ravi at East India Carpets.

Ravi understood that complementary businesses were better together. He introduced people, made connections and helped build the design community around the neighbourhood. We were very fortunate to build Bradford in the middle of it.

“Ravi introduced us to influential people in the design industry, and those early connections helped shape Bradford.”Wes

Fir Street

Room to do it right.

Eventually, West 2nd became too small. After nearly a decade there, we moved Bradford to Fir Street, giving us more room for the brands and collections we’d accumulated over the years — and finally enough space to start showing hardware the way we wanted to.

Of course, we’ve been changing it ever since.

“This is the dream showroom for us — the one we’d always pictured.”Wes

Our Showroom

The right things, not everything.

The latest refresh is the closest we’ve come to the showroom we’ve always had in our heads. We want Bradford to feel more like walking through a gallery or museum than a traditional hardware store — intentional, curated, and hopefully full of things you didn’t know you were looking for.

We source hardware from around the world and are fairly ruthless about what earns a place in the showroom. There’s already enough stuff in the world.

“We don’t want to show everything. We want to show the right things.”Wes