It must be the sea air that attracts the surfers to the Co Wicklow coastal town of Bray as it has lured another technology-based company, Megazyme International Ireland, which was officially opened yesterday. It marks another direct Internet sales success for Bray, already home to online sales pioneer Dell Computers. In Megazyme's case, Internet sales have allowed the high-technology food enzyme company to relocate lock stock and barrel halfway around the world.
Megazyme was founded in Australia in 1989 by Tipperary-born Angela Kennedy and her husband Dr Barry McCleary, an award-winning research scientist from Sydney. Dr McCleary, who previously worked for the New South Wales Department of Agriculture, says the company was born of his frustration at the lack of research methods in this area. It was set up with the aim of "developing and supplying diagnostic test kits and reagents for the cereals, food, feed and fermentation industries".
The company's products are used, for example, by food companies compiling total dietary fibre charts, such as are found on cornflakes boxes, and in the clothing industry for measuring the enzymes used in stonewashing jeans. Other products, such as pure enzymes, are used by research institutions.
Ms Kennedy says the company grew rapidly, with 300 per cent annual growth in 1993 to 1994, but the relocation to Ireland, begun in 1996, has meant one and a half years out of production. The move was "primarily for personal reasons", she says she wanted their two children to grow up in Ireland but she says it also made business sense due to the lower tax rates here and the proximity to European markets.
She says the move has not cost them a single customer, partly because they could stockpile several years' worth of products, and partly because at the end of 1996 they launched their Website offering direct sales over the Internet (www.megazyme.com).
Ms Kennedy says since going online the company which she says is the sole global supplier of 90 per cent of its products has attracted three new customers a week from all over the world. It has also had several of its test methods accepted as industry standards.
There are currently eight employees at the new Bray plant, where all the products are made, and Ms Kennedy predicts further growth: "We feel comfortably we can at least maintain a 30 per cent growth rate per annum," she says. Turnover is currently on target to reach £0.75 million this year, and current customers include Kelloggs, Coors, Nabisco, and both governmental and academic departments of food science, nutrition and agriculture worldwide.
With nearly 40 per cent of the company's sales now via the Internet, Ms Kennedy is well qualified to list the advantages of direct online sales. The first, she says, is that Megazyme's customers are primarily graduates, who are "IT aware".
"We're selling into an industry which uses the Net every day," she says.
The Internet is also a "superb marketing tool", she says, in so far as it allows new products to be promoted without having to print new manuals. The company plans to offer dual pricing in euros on the Website from next January.
However, there is one unexpected downside to the online presence: Ms Kennedy says they get lots of technical queries, and some students whose departments use Megazyme's products are getting lazy, and will email the company for information rather than go to the library to look up a paper. "They get you to do the reading and literature searches," she says, complaining that sometimes the information is in the data booklets accompanying the products.
Ms Kennedy says the relocation to Bray has worked out very well, both personally and professionally. The couple first met when both worked for Biocon Biochemicals in Cork in 1987, moved to Australia and married a year later. She says her husband, whom she describes as one of the top five cereal carbohydrate research chemists in the world, "hasn't left to go back yet". As for Dr McCleary, he is happy to be fully up and running, and says he is looking forward to new research initiatives. "This will be a challenging and exciting phase of our growth," he says.
Eoin Licken can be contacted at eoin@stilet.to
