Denise O'Mahony says the shopfloor is where businesses succeed or fail - if you can get it right there, everything else falls into place. As she stands at the door of Blarney Woollen Mills, currently celebrating its 10th anniversary in one of Dublin's busiest shopping areas - Nassau Street - that philosophy is clearly evident. In the background, soft Irish traditional airs are played and a coal fire burns brightly.
On first appearances Blarney Woollen Mills - with its miniature harps and Aran sweaters - resembles a slick Irish souvenir shop.
But Ms O'Mahony, who has managed the store for the last seven years, rejects accusations of "shamrockery".
As a businesswoman operating on a street populated by shops selling various types of Celtic paraphernalia and clothing, she is more concerned with selling than the cultural value of her stock.
"I am happiest on the shopfloor; that is my natural environment. I love dealing with customers," she says.
She believes the "ambience" of Blarney Woollen Mills makes customers more confident in the quality of the goods.
"When I started, the kind of clothes we sold were unique. We now find others are doing something similar, but we compete on our quality and service."
She also maintains that tourists - who are such a significant part of Blarney's customer base - are now more discerning than people think. "They know what they want and will be extremely careful about the price," she says.
Essential to her task is staff motivation and she says that when it comes to staff relations her approach is simple. "I don't expect any of the employees to do anything which I wouldn't do myself."
She cannot explain why so many women enter the retail sector, but thinks the pioneering female retailers of the past 20 years have contributed to the trend.
"Certainly a woman thinking about going into the retail scene now does not feel alone".
The 39-year-old Cork woman first joined Blarney Woollen Mills in 1984, when she did some summer holiday work in the original mill store in Cork.
She became assistant manageress in Cork in 1988. The company is controlled by the Kelleher family from Cork and employs between 600 and 700 people. It has an estimated turnover of between £40 million and £50 million.
Approximately 60 per cent of the clothing in the shop is made by the company itself; this includes jumpers, coats, caps, dresses and jackets.
"The biggest criticism made against us is that we are promoting some kind of old-fashioned image of Ireland," she says. "But if that is the case, why do we have so many Irish customers?"
Indeed, one of the most interesting elements of Blarney's operations is its changing customer base. "Ten years ago, during the summer, we existed on a procession of American tourists, but now we are serving a huge German and French customer base too," she says. "We are not foolish enough to think that peaked caps and Aran sweaters will keep us going during the winter, so we simply change the stock to better reflect the tastes of Irish customers who are in the majority at that stage in the year."
The success of the company over 10 years has much to do with a succession of "firsts", according to Ms O'Mahony. "We were the first shop in this area to have Sunday trading; we were the first Irish retail store in this sector to go on the Internet; we were the first Irish clothes store to really make a pitch for the home shopping networks, like QVC, in the United States," she says.
The acrimonious dispute between the company and its former chief executive, Ms Freda Hayes, in 1993, is not something Ms O'Mahony wishes to talk about. But she does not agree with one of the reasons cited by Ms Hayes at time for the disagreements - that advancement to upper management in Blarney Woollen Mills is confined to family members.
