Menswear shop has designs on more Family business sales

For a family firm, change is never easy but as Jim Monaghan says of the new direction his family retail chain has embarked on: "In retail you simply can't stand still or the market will pass you by."

In 1960, his father Tom Monaghan opened the first Monaghans in the Grafton Arcade selling classic men's knitwear. Nearly 40 years later, his son has opened the family's newest outlet on Nassau Street, a cool, stylish shop with an international feel selling mostly up-market cashmere knitwear. With family-owned Dublin city centre shops fast disappearing in the face of the influx of UK multiples, the move is a refreshingly positive one.

In the years since 1960, the family has opened a designer men's fashion shop in the Hibernian Way in 1989 and two shops in Kilcock in Co Kildare. However, the new designer shop on Nassau Street is a highly visible departure for the firm and its opening coincided with the development of a corporate image for the chain, complete with stylish bags and signage.

The fit-out of the new shop cost £100,000 and it's easy to see where the money went in the 1,800 sq ft space. Top quality Irish made units in American red oak line the walls and the floor is covered in Portuguese limestone, all of which makes for a look radically different from any other shop in the chain and indeed in any of the smaller shops on nearby Grafton Street.

"We wanted the shop to be very different," says Jim Monaghan, "and our thinking was to have the fit-out give it the atmosphere and style of a shop that would fit-in in Milan or New York." The sophisticated fashion on offer and the concentration on female customers is also new with Jim Monaghan pointing out that the shop stocks more cashmere than any other shop in Ireland. Traditionally, Monaghans would look to Irish, Scottish and British sources for their knitwear but for the new shop he headed to Italy for a more fashionable look. Some 20 per cent of the stock is branded Monaghans.

He regards the new location as nearly ideal. It is close enough to Grafton Street to appeal to Irish shoppers, while at the same time being perfectly placed to catch tourists as they go along Nassau Street, which is probably one of Dublin's most tourist-trod streets in the city. The unit became available last November when the landlords, Norwich Union, closed their retail outlet and refurbished the ground floor of the building.

The new look will eventually be applied to the Hibernian Way shop but Monaghan says the old-fashioned look of the Grafton Arcade shop will stay, not because of any sentimental attachment the family place on their first store but because of the harsh realities of retailing in and around Grafton Street. According to Monaghan, the arcade is owned by Marks & Spencer, which is slowly regaining possession of the individual units. With only a dozen years to go on the lease on their small shop there, and no immediate plan for the arcade, the family are reluctant to go to the expense of fitting out a shop that may not be a long-term proposition.