End of an era for Kennedy & McSharry

ONE OF Dublin’s oldest independent menswear shops, Kennedy & McSharry at Nassau Street, closed last weekend as a direct result of excessively high rents during the economic boom.

The company – in business since 1890 – had prided itself on carrying one of the most extensive ranges of high quality men’s clothing in the city. The business was run for the past 30 years by brothers Neil and Tony McSharry, grandsons of one of the founders, Michael McSharry.

He and a friend, John Kennedy, trained in Arnotts and left 122 years ago to open a menswear shop at 24 Westmoreland Street, the period building overlooking O’Connell Bridge. Eighty years later, Kennedy McSharry left Westmoreland Street after their premises were damaged in a fire. Neil and Tony worked alongside their father Michael and uncle Brendan in Nassau Street until they retired in the 1980s.

Neil McSharry said that as soon as they announced the closure earlier this month there was an unbelievable reaction from customers and friends who had known them for many years. “We had a very personalised trade . . . many third and fourth generation customers were very upset that we were closing. One customer in the catering trade even sent in trays of sandwiches.”

With the Nassau Street store trading well in the 1980s, the two brothers invested heavily in two Lacoste franchises, which they opened on Wicklow Street and Liffey Street. Both businesses were initially successful but as the Lacoste products became more freely available in other outlets in the city, the brothers decided to close both shops. Lacoste took over the Wicklow Street business. It was more difficult to assign the lease of the Liffey Street premises, but with the brothers unable to pay the high rent they felt they had no option but to close.

Meanwhile, the rent on the Nassau Street shop doubled to €166,000 in 2000 as landlords in the Grafton Street area pushed for higher returns as part of the economic boom. “Everyone thought we were doing exceptionally because of the increased turnover, but with artificially high rents it was not that great when you got to the bottom line,” said Neil McSharry.

When Kennedy McSharry’s lease of the Nassau Street shop ran out in June 2011, they negotiated a new lease at a substantially lower rent – believed to be €80,000 per annum. The brothers reached agreement with their landlords – Aviva – on a schedule for the payment of overdue rent. However, Neil said that when they discovered that the owners of the Liffey Street shop were also “going to come after us for the arrears of rent, our solicitor advised us that there was no chance of keeping up with all the arrears”. At that stage they decided to put the business into liquidation.

Had he been driven out of business by high rents? Historically that is correct. If it had been possible for us to draw a line to start when the new rent was negotiated we could have gone on, but the accumulation of overdue rent got us in the end.”

The McSharry brothers are partners in the Magee men’s shop on Wicklow Street – it continues to be run by the Donegal company – and are looking at the possibility of opening a “niche business” such as a hat shop for men.