ONLINE SHOPPING:A Dublin family sports supplier, McSport, has gone online in a big way, writes ANGELA RUTTLEDGE
PHILIP McLAUGHLIN is excited. “We have just sold and delivered soccer goals to Carton House for the visit of Real Madrid on July 20th,” he says. “They will be the first goals that the two most expensive footballers in the history of soccer, Kaka and Ronaldo will use for Real Madrid. They are the same goals that are used in Wembley, Old Trafford and also Croke Park for all soccer games. This is a big deal for us.”
McLaughlin and his sister Carol own McSport, a sports equipment supplier which recently relaunched its website, mcsport.ie, ably assisted by Dan Carter, the All-Blacks fly-half and Adidas poster boy. “A lot of our equipment isn’t available in the high street, we do the A-Z of sports. We have 5,000 products online and we deal with all the big brands and the not-so-well-known brands. A lot of people may not have heard of us yet, but if they are involved in sport, or coaching sport, they are probably using our equipment,” says McLaughlin.
“We are quite busy at the moment thankfully. We deal with all the professional teams in Ireland and we sell XLR8 equipment for training, ladders, hurdles, the type of products that would have originated in the American football market to teach ‘multi-directional running’. This teaches the brain to react on the field. We also supply many schools. It’s the man and the woman on the street who might not be as aware of us – yet.”
McLaughlin, who is married to the writer and former Miss Ireland Amanda Brunker, may be on call with a 24/7 mail order business, but there are rules. “I’ve made a deal that I’m at home at tea-time because we have a three-year-old and a two-year-old. We put them to bed and that’s non-negotiable. If I have more work to do then it has to be done after their bed-time.”
He admits that we are still somewhat slow to embrace mail order in Ireland. “Irish people – we might know what we want but we still want to ring and have a chat before we hand over our credit card details. But callers are very savvy, they will have checked all the UK websites and they’ll say they can get the product for such and such elsewhere, so we have to be very competitive with our prices.”
This summer, the Playm8 range is popular. “Parents can have their own little PE class in the back garden, it includes instructional DVDs and cards – everything down to three-legged race ties. Parents love it, anything to get children away from the PlayStation.”
McSport started with McLaughlin’s father, who had a couple of sports shops on the southside of Dublin. “He was in business for 30 years. I got involved after he became ill, and then my sister came back from America and joined the business, too.” They decided to develop the online service and invested heavily in the design of their website. You’ll find the range of sports equipment at www.mcsport.ie.