Geraldine Swarbrigg is, quite literally, a natural-born retailer. "My parents were general drapers in Arva, Co Cavan. I was reared in the business at the back of the house." Her own company is somewhat larger - Swarbrigg expects to have a turnover of £10 million in 1998.
While she has owned a number of thriving clothes shops for the past 18 years, her current success evolved from a Norwegian skiing holiday in 1990. "One day on the way back to where we were staying, I stopped off in a shopping centre and, as I always do, started nosing around. I walked into this one shop and bells started ringing; from a retailing point of view, it was perfect."
The shop was called Vero Moda, owned by a Danish company with which Swarbrigg soon went into partnership. "Even before the end of the holiday, I had the whole thing planned in my head. It took me about four months to get a meeting in Denmark; I went over and immediately got an agreement to set up here in Ireland." The first Irish Vero Moda shop opened in Galway's Eyre Square in July 1991 "and we practically ran out of stock in 10 days". During the autumn of the same year, she set up two more branches, one of them on Grafton Street in Dublin.
She now has 15 Vero Moda shops in the Republic, three of which are consistently in the company's top 10 performers throughout Europe. Turnover last year was £7.5 million and Swarbrigg employs 150 people, full- and part-time. Having studied English and philosophy at university, she never intended to become a shop-keeper although while an undergraduate, summers were spent working in Harrod's. "The importance of customer care really hit me when I was there. Not everyone is cut out for this business: I always tell my staff that if you don't enjoy meeting people, you should go elsewhere." She was eventually offered a full-time job by Harrod's "and I would have taken it but by then I'd met my future husband [musician-turned-manager Tommy Swarbrigg] and wanted to stay in Ireland - which proves I'm not really a career girl".
She taught for a while and then, after marriage, stopped working altogether for a few months "but I got so bored and realised there had to be more to life than this".
Since their marriage, the Swarbriggs have lived in Mullingar and when in 1980 a property came up for sale in the town, they bought it and she opened a record shop. A year later, she took on another shop, renamed Unique Boutique and filled it with clothes labels such as In Wear and Part Two, then not available anywhere else in the midlands. Both early Mullingar ventures are still in business, along with another in Longford, all of them run by sisters-in-law.
However, Vero Moda is very much Swarbrigg's own concern. "I'm totally loyal to the business. This is my baby and my life. For three or four years, I was going around like a woman obsessed, usedn't to take a day off, although things have eased off a bit lately. I've had fantastic support from my husband and two children, but still, the only time I switch off completely is when I go skiing; I don't put on my mobile phone or tell other people where I'm staying." Swarbrigg does not work on the shopfloor - "I wouldn't be relaxed any more and nor would my staff" - but goes through each outlet regularly. She is responsible for buying all stock, chosen with the Irish market in mind. "The main difference here is colour, although in the last couple of years black has become essential to the Irish as well as beiges and creams. Before, you could give me a good red or apple green and it would be guaranteed to work in this country. I've a feeling that until now the Irish always wanted warmth and a bit of colour." More importantly, "size was a problem at the beginning. Because of the typical Irish woman's shape, you have to stock smaller sizes in jackets than trousers or skirts and that had to be explained."
Swarbrigg believes her customer base is broad and not restricted to any one age group. "First of all, I imagined my typical customer was 18 to 25 as seemed to be the case in Scandinavia. I soon realised they're not as young as that. There's no limit; they can be 25 or 45 and we have mothers and daughters buying from the same shop. So now we're introducing the Only collection which is specifically aimed at the 15-21 market. I believe to have a good, successful business, I need to have both of these lines." In recent seasons, she has also been introducing Vero Moda's range for men, called Jack & Jones. Aimed at the same wide market and with an emphasis on comfort and style at moderate prices, this has two outlets of its own, as well as being available through 20 other shops in Ireland. That figure is expected to rise to 50 during the present year, with three more stand-alone Jack & Jones units opening next autumn.
Late last year, Swarbrigg brought into Ireland a children's line, EXIT Kids, currently stocked by just a couple of Vero Moda shops but intended to be available wholesale in 1998.
Inevitably, her success has not gone unnoticed. "I get calls every week from someone who wants to franchise Vero Moda, but I feel having gone so far down the road in charge of the whole group I don't want to do that." Additional shops are envisaged, although not necessarily within the next year. "I never know when is enough," she says. Swarbrigg has been offered the option of opening a Vero Moda outlet in Belfast, but "it just hasn't worked out. And I've looked at Edinburgh and Glasgow too". In every country where the label is stocked, Vero Moda shares a common corporate image and shop fit-out, "but we do it the Irish way. For example they wanted blue for the corporate colour but I decided it was the same as too many other shops here, so I picked out a petrol-green which is more an Irish shade. I'm not always right; in the beginning, I had my doubts about the name, because I thought it sounded as though it was named after an auntie. But I had to go with it and that was fine."
So too has been Vero Moda's policy of staggered introduction of new stock. In addition to the customary two main seasons, there are also items brought into shops for the high summer and Christmas market. But throughout the year, deliveries are regulated so that new elements come on stream almost every week, thereby tempting customers back constantly. And given the relatively inexpensive prices of most stock, devotees can make frequent purchases.
Understandably, Geraldine Swarbrigg does not feel she has suffered from lack of business training. "I work on instinct but that's the secret. I was born into it; retailing is in the genes. I mean, what training did my grandfather have in 1911 when he left the family farm and opened a shop in Arva?"