Take the plunge and do it alone

When Ronnie McNeill was made redundant after 21 years with the iconic sunglasses maker Ray-Ban, his first reaction was "why me?". Initial feelings of anger, however, gradually subsided into quiet acceptance of the situation and he managed to turn what could have been a devastating blow into an opportunity.

Ronnie was new product manager at Ray-Ban's Waterford plant when the brand was sold by Bausch & Lomb to the Italian Luxottica group in 1999. Within the year, Luxottica had shut the factory.

As many people do after being made redundant, Ronnie used his considerable expertise to move into consultancy.

"I went off consulting throughout the world on the eyewear business for a year and was based in the Far East most of the time," he says.

During that time, Ronnie worked with top design houses such as Versace, Cartier, Dunhill and Alain Mikli, and began to realise that launching his own eyewear collection was well within the bounds of possibility.

So in 2002, he came home to Waterford and used €50,000 of his redundancy package to set up Ronell Eyewear. However, he made sure to keep some of his lump sum aside rather than risking everything on the business.

As well as carrying out a feasibility study with Waterford City Enterprise Board, he also completed the board's 10-week start your own business course which he found extremely helpful.

"While I'm an engineer/designer, there was very little I knew about accounts, so you learn all that," he says.

Ronnie admits that he hadn't ever given much thought to branching out on his own while he was at Ray-Ban. "To be quite honest, I was too comfortable." Losing his job turned out to be the catalyst for creating Ronell Eyewear, which has since developed into a thriving business.

Ronnie supplies his collection of sunglasses and ophthalmic frames to independent opticians and has recently added a line of ski products to his suite. "We have a nice niche range, it's a great quality product and our customers contact us time after time after time," he says.

Ronnie says working in a multinational did not prepare him at all for working for himself. "It's so different. Every dollar's your own," he says. "When it's your own money, yes, you worry.

"My advice to people who are still employed out there is: be prepared and be aware that these things do happen," he says. "It's not the end of the world and people should always have another string to their bow."

Anyone currently facing the prospect of redundancy should be reassured to know that Ronnie's story is far from unique.

Since Motorola closed its Cork operation earlier this year, a number of the 330 employees who found themselves out of a job have since set up their own ventures.

Reports indicate that as many as 10 start-ups have been launched by Motorola alumni who decided to use the skills acquired while working at the multinational, together with their redundancy packages, to strike out on their own.