FRIDAY INTERVIEW:Marian Greg O'Gorman, Kilkenny Group
THE KILKENNY store on Dublin’s Nassau Street sells Orla Kiely accessories, Nicholas Mosse pottery and eco-friendly Bog Buddies, “handmade with love from pure Irish bog”. There’s a dash of tradition with Newbridge Silverware (sales of which are holding up) and Waterford Crystal (not so much). But what it doesn’t sell, under any circumstances, is Aran sweaters.
“If you look around, you’ll see no shamrocks. You won’t find any leprechauns in here. We’ve no T-shirt with Ireland on it. There’s no Aran sweaters,” says Marian O’Gorman, chief executive of Kilkenny Group.
“In the past 10 years, we haven’t stocked Aran sweaters,” says Greg, Marian’s son, who is Kilkenny’s marketing manager. “Fifteen years, I’d say,” adds Marian.
Only a fifth of the Dublin store’s custom comes from tourists and, in almost all of its other eight shops, the percentage would be even lower, she says. But shifting consumer perceptions of the group in line with its more contemporary mix of stock is “a hard one to crack”.
Despite the challenge of communicating the modern Kilkenny brand on a limited marketing budget, footfall has increased. Indeed, in common with a number of retailers, the group reports a market characterised by a higher frequency, but lower value, of transactions.
The group’s accounts show it made an operating loss of almost €122,000 in the year to the end of January 2010, though turnover fell just 1.1 per cent to €16.2 million. Last year it was “a little bit worse off, but not by very much”, says Greg.
Clothing is “one of the more challenged areas”, he admits, attributing this to customers squeezing “an extra season” out of an item.
The group’s expansion plans – it has just opened in Trim, and will soon raise the shutters in Stillorgan shopping centre – are motivated by a need to achieve a certain scale.
“To be profitable, we really do need to expand, because we can open stores without increasing our overheads. So we really do need to do this,” says Marian.
She’s also looking at Belfast as a possible target and would ideally like to have a third store in Dublin.
Two openings are earmarked for 2012, with the expansion also enabled by keener rents. Among its store network, only Galway and Nassau Street are still stuck at peak-market rates, and a forthcoming lease review on the latter will help.
Greg believes a more thoughtful purchasing mindset, supportive of Irish producers, is also beneficial. “Definitely there’s been a transition from customers not really wanting to understand where a product comes from to feeling that it’s part of their purchasing process.”
Recently introduced Irish suppliers whose products have trialled well in stores include Vera Gaffney, a Roscommon-based painter, and Amanda Murphy, a Waterford ceramics designer.
Marian marvels about the crafts her group carries with the kind of lingering enthusiasm of someone whose life has been ingrained in the retail business since childhood, which it has. She races down to the ground floor to show me one of “the new teapots” by a supplier they met and advised at a craft fair, a Czech designer living in Ireland called Radek Zemlicka.
“I love it, like, I really love it,” she says, brandishing a handcrafted turquoise teapot (€72.95) with surreally stretched proportions that looks like something out of Alice in Wonderland. “How quirky is that,” Marian says. “You’d put that on your sideboard.”
So how hard is it for an arts-and-crafts maker to get across the Kilkenny threshold? “We always meet crafts people who contact us. Always. Just in case we miss out,” she says.
However, sometimes would-be suppliers are shy.
“Sometimes they’re almost afraid to talk to us,” Greg says. “But we can’t run the business unless they come to us and we find something different and unique.”
Greg’s sisters, Melissa and Michelle, also work in the group, with Melissa managing the Dublin store and Michelle overseeing stores in Munster and Galway.
“We’re all in different spaces as well, so the overlap is probably minimal enough,” he says. “Very important!” interjects Marian, laughing.
Marian is now the 100 per cent shareholder of the Kilkenny Group, but there was a time when she had to share the same retail patch with her siblings. Her late father, Christy Kelleher, founded the Blarney Woollen Mills empire, with three of his sons and all three daughters working for the group.
Freda (Hayes) became chief executive but, after Kelleher’s death in 1991, sibling rivalries stirred boardroom tensions, leading to Hayes’s resignation in 1993.
Marian took over as chief executive, but there was a further split, with the three brothers on one side, and Marian, her sister Bernadette and her husband Michael O’Gorman on the other.
In a High Court agreement, the empire was divided, with the brothers keeping the Blarney brand and the sisters taking the Kilkenny brand. (Hayes, meanwhile, set up the Meadows Byrne chain.)
At the time, Marian called this “a sensible agreement”. It is little wonder that her experience inspired some caution when her own children expressed a desire to join Kilkenny.
“I never encouraged it,” she says. “They all worked in various places before they came in, and we never encouraged it, but there was a job there. They have to be able to perform in their job, like everyone else.”
Having “outsiders” on the board is vital, she says. “Otherwise you can get, I suppose, emotional about it.” Two of these “outsiders” conduct annual performance reviews of Greg, Michelle and Melissa. “And they don’t hold back I can tell you,” says Greg.
“No, no,” says Marian, smiling. “But they’re not meant to.”
For Marian, the lessons of her own generation were to “keep it professional” and business-like at work, but to clock off, too. “It is difficult. Sometimes I say to Greg – we’re out, stop, now. We have to have our lives.”
ON THE RECORD
Name and title: Marian O'Gorman, chief executive of Kilkenny Group, and her son Greg O'Gorman, marketing manager.
Background and family:Marian grew up in Blarney, working in her father's business from an early age. She and her husband have four children; her youngest son has just gone to Australia where she is hoping to visit him next year, "without my laptop". Greg, who grew up near Blarney and now lives in the village, is married with two small children.
Something you might expect:They were not too enamoured with last year's "awful" pre-Christmas snow, which decimated city centre footfall.
Something that might surprise:Marian is not averse to cleaning tables in the Nassau Street store cafe "if it's very busy".
