Flying the flag abroad

A look at the candidates for Entrepeneur of the Year

Nominee: James Kilbane Grafton Recruitment

Grafton Recruitment was established in Grafton Street Dublin in 1982. From an initial concentration of recruitment in IT and Engineering sectors, and office staff, the company has transformed into Ireland's largest recruitment solutions providers under the group name Grafton Employment Solutions Portfolio (Grafton ESP).

It comprises Grafton Recruitment, Blueprint Specialist Appointments, Maryb.ie, Spengler Fox and Grafton Healthcare. In 1994 they opened their first international office in Prague and now operate 76 offices in 18 countries. Grafton ESP employs a total of 700 in-house consultants and 8,500 contracted staff worldwide. Total sales for year end March 2007 were €139 million, €100 million of which was generated in Ireland, North and South. In 2002 and 2006 the firm was awarded the Queens Award for Enterprise in recognition of export achievement.

Products/Services:

Grafton ESP operates five levels of service, HR Process, Outsourcing Recruitment Process, Outsourcing Interim Management and Executive Search, and Selection International Recruitment Local and National Recruitment

In addition Grafton ESP also offers added value services including: Business Improvement Consultancy, HR Consultancy, Credit Management Consultancy, Payroll Outsourcing, and Recruitment Campaign Marketing Management.

Customers:

Grafton ESP works with thousands of SMEs, National and Multinational organisations across the world. Their international network spans North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia. Clients include, Tesco, Intel, RBS-Ulster Bank, Georgia Pacific, Cadbury, Microsoft, Deutsche Bank, DHL, Abbot Vascular, Google, Quinn Group, SAP and Coca Cola.

Q: Which personal attributes do you think have contributed to your most success?

A: As my first experience in London was healthcare recruitment where the patient was the "end-user", integrity and collaboration were my mottos then and are the branch values by which we still live today throughout our group.

Q: What motivates you to succeed?

A: Difficult to answer. I still look forward every day to the pleasures ahead but I suppose it can be encapsulated in the sheer joy of signing a mortgage application for Sonya Cabezas, a consultant in our Santiago office, who came from the poorer part of the city and who is now on the property owning ladder. This happens all over our Grafton world. We make huge differences to peoples lives through work.

Q: Has your Irishness contributed to your success?

A: Enormously! Our people around the world are extremely proud to work in an Irish company.

Q: What are the biggest challenges you see your industry facing?

A: The Labour/Employment Regulations, and the flight away from flexible labour practices which will have a direct bearing on our particular sector.

Q: How do you recharge your batteries?

A: A seriously unhealthy interest in Rugby Union and all that that entails which is mostly bad for me but enormously enjoyable.

Nominee: Michael Dawson Gift Voucher Shop

Founded in Dublin, The Gift Voucher Shop Ltd (GVS) launched in 2002 in strategic partnership with An Post, selling gift vouchers in Ireland through An Post's 1,000 post offices and through www.giftvouchershop.ie, corporate sales and telesales.

GVS offers the most comprehensive range of gift vouchers for top global brands as well as smaller independent retail partners. Five years on and GVS is established in three countries and in discussions with four more other European post offices.

The company employs 65 fulltime staff and up to 20 additional staff over the Christmas period. The group's projected turnover for 2007 will exceed €120m with a target of €1 billion per annum by 2011.

Products/Services:

Among the products and services that GVS has now developed are the Store Voucher, the One4all Gift Voucher, the Perfect Gift Voucher, the Experience4all Gift Voucher, and the One4all Gift Card. GVS offers a wide range of services to their corporate and consumer market, including The Wedding List Service that enables couples to manage their wedding list through a web-based tool, and the Benefit in Kind (BIK) Management Tool that allows corporate clients to manage incentive allocations within the Irish Revenue Commissioners' rules.

Customers:

Its customers are end users along with most of the major retail brands including Brown Thomas, B&Q, Debenhams and Woolworths. More than 2,000 corporate clients use GVS including Aer Lingus, Arup, Fingal County Council, IBM, McDonalds, Microsoft, Tesco and Wyeth. One4all gift voucher recipients can spend their vouchers in more than 25,000 locations.

Q: What prompted you to start up in business?

A: As a serial entrepreneur The Gift Voucher Shop was just another void that needed to be filled, something that should have been there or something that needed to be done better. In this age of technology it made no sense that people had to travel long distances to buy a gift voucher. My vision was that through a network of locations, consumers could conveniently purchase their choice of gift voucher.

Q: Has your Irishness contributed to your success?

A: Most definitely yes. In the early 1990s selling internationally was very difficult. However, 15 years on it's been a complete turnabout. If you're Irish, people want to meet you and are already preconditioned that you're going to have something positive to tell them. The success of Ireland has a positive reflection on its business people abroad.

Q: Environment, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and fair trade - what role do these play in your business strategy?

A: Environment is high on the agenda. For example, one of our new product offerings is a Green4all gift voucher, which will allow companies and individuals provide a gift in the knowledge that it is 100 per cent environmentally friendly. GVS has also been very innovative in its approach to its CSR, stepping up quickly to the Red Cross's tsunami appeal and sponsoring national and local projects.

Q: How do you recharge your batteries?

A: I enjoy gardening whenever I can get to it, I won't pass up on a good political debate and particularly enjoy music.

Nominee: Stephen Grant Grant Engineering

Grant Engineering Ireland Ltd was founded in 1978 near Birr, Co Offaly, to design, manufacture and supply a wide range of efficient heating products.

From an initial factory size of 1500sq ft with 20 employees and manufacturing the twin pass back boiler for domestic use, the company's product range and output has grown to require a 75,000sq ft factory facility and now employs 200 in Ireland and 60 in the UK. Grant Engineering has an annual turnover of €40million.

Products:

The company design and manufacture a range of Oil Fired Condensing Central Heating Boilers and is now the biggest manufacturer of Oil Fired Boilers in Ireland and the UK. A continuous emphasis is placed on maximum efficiency of the product and regard for emissions to the environment is a key factor in their product development.

Their efforts have resulted in the Condensing range of products with efficiencies of 97 per cent offering householders a saving of up to 30 per cent on oil bills. The company also supply solar systems and is at advanced stages in the development of pellet boilers.

Customers:

The products are distributed via a network of Builders Merchants throughout Ireland and the UK, ie Chadwicks and Heatmerchants. They supply solar systems to the housing, hospitality, healthcare (hospitals) and leisure (swimming pools) market. The company has a national technical back-up service in both Ireland and the UK.

Q: What vision prompted you to start up in business?

A: I was installing oil-fired boilers in 1970s when the first oil crisis hit and people were turning to solid fuel. I was asked to fit solid fuel back boilers, which were poorly designed and inefficient. This inspired me to develop a high output, high efficiency solid fuel back boiler, which when tested in UK was found to be the most efficient back boiler tested at that time.

Q: What motivates you to succeed?

A: I always set targets for efficiency standards to be much higher than what legislation requires. I have produced boilers of maximum efficiency, user and installer friendly and positioned the company and products as household names by reducing CO2 emissions by tens of thousands of tons annually. By this I have achieved my goal.

Q: What is your biggest achievement?

A: Our very strong position in the UK market which has gone from zero to 50 per cent market share on oil-fired condensing boilers in recent years. To date we have over 40 patents granted on 20 products and several more pending, so my ability to work with our research and development team to bring high quality products to the market place.

Q: What is the biggest challenge you see your industry facing?

A: The rising cost of labour and raw materials and competitiveness in the market place but also a challenge to produce products of zero emissions or extremely low emissions - ie hydrogen power or some other form of energy that isn't yet discovered.

Nominee: Darryl Ismail Chase International

Chase International was founded in 1990 and the head office is located in Dublin. The company provides an online reservation service offering 40,000 hotels and apartments worldwide. The online booking engine enables users to make a booking in five clicks that will be processed in 45 seconds. Over the past four years the company achieved growth of over 770 per cent. Chase Travel International now employs over 112 with wage and other contributions to the Irish and local economy in the order of €8 million a year.

Products:

Chase International has three business units, The Online Travel Wholesaler, Travel Technology and a Medical Interface system. Catering for all budgets and tastes the Travel Wholesaler provides, in addition to property, flights - including scheduled, low-cost carriers and charter flights - international car hire and cruise booking engine. Travel Technology was established in 2006 to provide total end-to-end reservations software for all types of travel companies. The Medical Interface system is a reliable booking engine that allows clients/patients to research and book treatments, hotels and flights.

Customers:

Chase Travel International has over 16,000 clients worldwide, these include large travel agency groups and consortia such as First Choice, Worldchoice, Travelsavers, Thomas Cook and Sabre. The customer base is global but the concentration is in the following counties: Ireland, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Holland, UAE and other Middle Eastern and Asian countries. By the end of 2007 overseas markets will represent the largest portion of the company's sales.

Q: Describe your progression from start-up to our current status?

A: During the first two years my initial goal was to survive. In 1990 with a start-up capital of £3,000 and with six hotels contracted, I negotiated to obtain nine months credit in order to build cash flow. In 2001, we launched our first online booking engine and since then we've achieved double digit growth not only in Ireland but also overseas.

Q: Which personal attributes do you think have contributed most to your success?

A: There would be possibly five. A sense of adventure, excitement, passion to succeed, ability to be very focused and abundant energy to face challenges and engage in the projects.

Q: Are there any interesting or unusual circumstances surrounding the inception of the company or its evolution?

A: After investing a lot of time and money to launch the first website, the day before we launched, 9/11 occurred. Some 80 per cent of bookings made during that month were cancelled. I kept my cool and came up with the idea of negotiating exclusive rates with European hotels which offered me rock-bottom prices (up to 80 per cent discount in some cases). By the end of September, we recovered 90 per cent of our sales target for the month pre-9/11. This ensured the survival of the company but also the growth in a very difficult position.

Q: How do you recharge your batteries?

A: I like being busy, and have many varied interests which include outdoor activities.