From medtech to health food retailer

When Dave McGeady was made redundant from his job at a medical technology company in 2012, he wasn’t sure what to do next.

He had worked in investment banking before that and acquired an MBA along the way. “I started applying for jobs, but there wasn’t an awful lot out there.”

McGeady decided to do something entrepreneurial. “I was 31, didn’t have a family or mortgage. I thought this was a great time to do something myself,” he says.

Healthy snacks

But the idea for healthy food company Wyldsson did not come to him in a lightning bolt. Instead, he went looking for an idea. Eating well was on his mind because of a recent bout with skin cancer.

“Healthy eating is something everybody struggles with. I became more interested in that after my run-in with skin cancer. I wanted to take a good look at what I was eating and putting into my body, for my health.”

He started with a snack people often assume is healthy: trail mix. “There is trail mix in every supermarket, but it’s actually a very poor quality product. It’s full of junk, the fruit is candied and it’s nasty.”

McGeady experimented with different ingredients at his kitchen table. He went to trade fairs in France, Germany, London and LA to meet producers and find interesting things such as golden berries, organic banana from Ecuador and pomegranate in California.

Fast-forward a couple years and McGeady’s company sells a range of dairy-free, gluten-free snack mixes, mueslis, porridge and yoghurt toppings, porridge, nut and seed butters and more.

Online shop

McGeady can keep his products preservative-free because they don’t sit on a shelf. He sells directly from an online shop. Because there is no middle-man, McGeady says, he can afford to give his customers a better product.

The idea for the web store came from observing Israel’s vibrant start-up culture while studying for an MBA at Tel Aviv University.

“Everybody there seems to have their own little company. They’re really plucky and courageous and just go ahead and do stuff. They don’t worry about what people think or obsess over little details. They just have a stab at it and continuously improve based on their first attempt. That’s a very Israeli way of doing it,” he said.

“They do things very quickly – rapid prototyping. The whole idea of the web store has come from that mentality.

“I was developing these products and had thought I’d go into retail. But I wanted to get the stuff out there as quickly as I could and get feedback from customers.”

He plans to keep the business online. He likes the direct relationship with customers and often tweaks products based on customer feedback.

Next steps

Three quarters of Wyldsson.com customers are from Ireland, and the remaining quarter are from the UK. “2015 is going to be all about the UK,” McGeady says.

Wyldsson is also launching a subscription service using technology licensed from a company in the US. It will be a flexible subscription, so customers will be able to choose the products they want each month.