Design isn’t just Mark Suess' profession. It’s his basic instinct. “I’ve always had a creating mind. I’ve always looked at things and deciphered how they were made and figured out how they could be better. I’ve always had an eye for the detail,” he explains.

His childhood home provided the perfect environment for his budding talents. Mark, the son of a homebuilder and seamstress, spent his entire life experimenting with tools, materials, and fabrics. “My father had building materials left from projects and my mother had sewing materials, so I just put them together,” he says.

In his mother’s family photo album is a picture of a 6-year-old Mark, goggles on, earnestly working with his Mattel power shop. He blew his weekly allowance on balsam wood from the hobby shop. He spent his playtime putting together Tinker Toys and building structures with his erector set. He loved to watch the whirring mechanisms of his mother’s sewing machine. “I was fascinated by it,” he says.

Mark discovered at a young age that he could learn to make the things he wanted. “I like being surrounded by nice things, and to me it was easy to have them. I also appreciate quality because I know the difference. I can see the difference. I can smell the difference. I can feel the difference."

At age 10, he created his first accessory, a wagon for his brother’s Western action figure. “The action figure had a horse, so I made a covered wagon for the horse to pull. I used scrap wood and a wire hanger, I sewed one of my dad’s old work shirts into a canopy, made some wooden wheels, screwed them on, and voila.”

Mark’s design career started in college, when he got a job doing display windows and presentation for a department store in his hometown, St. Cloud, MN. He went on to become a draftsman for an architect, followed by retail design, and eventually became a home furnishings buyer for a family-owned department store. From there, he opened a casual lifestyle furnishing store in conjunction with a local lumber company, and then he struck out on his own and established Mark Suess Design.

Mark’s world travels contributed to his creative palette and reputation around the world. He politely shrugged convention and blazed his own brand of global design, blending such unlikely bedfellows as French provincial, Asian traditional, Italian contemporary, and American casual into unique furnishings and spatial solutions.

Mark combines his international focus with a strong loyalty to his roots. He keeps his primary residence in St. Cloud and remains deeply invested in the community. He serves on boards for local arts organizations, and gives his time and creative input generously to area event planning and charity events. Mark has served on the Minnesota governor’s residence council for eight years.

Scottsdale, AZ has become Mark's second home in recent years. “I was drawn to the desert. I was drawn to the foothills, to the mountains. I was also drawn to the culture – the West, the cowboy.”