In conversation with Pat O'Farrell, co-founder, Carrigaline Cheese

What sets your product apart in the industry?

Our cheese is all handmade. Even the packaging is done by hand. Our ingredients are 96 per cent Irish. We source milk for our cheese and wood for the smoked cheese locally. Our cheese was served to two American presidents who visited Ireland – Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. We have to assume they have good taste! It has also won a lot of awards, including a World Cheese Award.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in business?

When we first set up we didn’t do any marketing. We were reliant on distributors to market our product and merchandise it well. Once the cheese went out the door, we were happy. We never followed up on it in stores and wondered why our orders weren’t increasing. We now go into shops regularly and are always checking how our cheese is being displayed.

What has been your major success to date?

Getting our product listed in so many shops and seeing its popularity rise. We also have our cheese in lots of hotels, for example on hotel cheese boards, which is a great achievement.

We started exporting to the United States 12 years ago. At one stage we sold more to the US than in Ireland. It was crazy as people were often returning from holidays in America, telling us they’d seeing our product over there. The market has changed hugely now though and our domestic market is by far our biggest market. We still export, mainly to the UK, France, Italy, Dubai and the US. We are producing approximately 300,000 units of cheese every year and we probably export around 20 per cent.

We have also successfully introduced new flavours. In the early 1990s I saw a TV programme about the health benefits of garlic. I decided to put garlic into our cheese, and that product is still on of our best sellers.

Who do you admire most in business and why?

The people that are starting off in business today, especially people in the food business. They are to be commended as it’s no easy job setting up in a recession.

When people go shopping and see new Irish products on the shelves, I think it has a positive effect on the economy. We set up in the recession in the 1980s. We were dairy farmers at the time but needed to do something else as we had a young family and needed more money. I saw an advertisement for a cheese course in UCC and the rest is history.

What piece of advice would you give to the Government to stimulate the economy?

They should reduce the amount of red tape that businesses have to deal with. For example, I tried to hire someone through the JobBridge scheme recently. I didn’t just want someone through that scheme because they were cheap. I was prepared to keep the person on after they’d completed training and give them a full salary. There was so much hassle going through the JobBridge scheme because I wanted to offer them proper pay and a full-time job. I ended up just hiring someone that called in off the street. Also, I think people giving out government funding should have to know what a person needs to make money.

I think Leader and Enterprise Ireland funding is excellent. I’ve received funding myself.

That said, the people deciding on the funding should have run a business themselves or have been self-employed, so they truly know the pressures involved. There should be help rather than high jumps.

What would you say has been your biggest challenge?

Getting our products listed. We worked with distributors when we set up the business in 1987. We were hugely dependent on them though to get our products listed and selling at an affordable price. We now supply Tesco and Musgraves directly. We also got a marketing person on board as there’s huge competition within the cheese industry. Often you could have 100 types of cheese on display in a supermarket. We have to be mindful of our positioning in the store.

What’s your business worth and would you sell it?

We often wondered how much the business was worth. In a way, you could say it’s invaluable. If we didn’t have a family to take it over, we’d probably sell it. That said, we’d also probably sell it if someone walked in the door tomorrow and offered us €2.5 million cash.

Do you think the banks are open for business to SMEs at the moment?

We don’t have first-hand experience as the only loan we ever got from the bank was when we set up in the late 1980s. We paid a huge interest rate back then – it was 21 per cent – so we haven’t been back since. It’s definitely very hard for people setting up new businesses now though, as often they won’t have any financial history/credit history. On top of that, they might have very little experience in business, so the odds are really stacked against them. Effectively we now own the banks though, so it’s very annoying that some excellent SMEs are being refused loans. You really have to have a good business plan going forward.