Trade NamesSuppliers to the cleaning business for over 30 years, G O'Donoghue & Son Ltd is still innovating to stay ahead, writes Rose Doyle
Gerry O'Donoghue tells a great story. He's 82, going on half that age, with a memory for detail and the telling word that latter day stand-up comedians would envy. He's been in the business of selling for a working lifetime and, even though son Louis runs things these days, he still turns up for the mornings in the company he set up in 1972 "to give a dig out".
G O'Donoghue & Son Ltd is in the business of helping the rest of us keep the buildings we inhabit clean. Just recently moved to Santry Business Park after nearly 30 years in Lomond Avenue, Marino, it supplies floor cleaning equipment, safety matting, janitorial and washroom supplies, odour control systems and, big and growing these days, eco products.
When Gerry O'Donoghue, a 1970s innovator if ever there was one, spotted a niche in the market early in that decade he went into action. It was helpful that he knew the Irish market well, had already tried and succeeded at a variety of jobs selling various products. Not a man to tell things by halves, he begins at the beginning.
"I was born in Ranelagh on October 25th, 1925 and lived subsequently on Leeson Park Avenue until my parents split up. My father was a drapers' assistant in Clerys, later in O'Reillys in North Earl Street. When the war years came my mother rented and ran a shop in Mountjoy Street. There was just my sister Aileen and myself - my brother Louis died of meningitis when he was six years old."
With the stage thus set we move closer to his working life. He went to UCD for a couple of years, "failed miserably" to pass exams, "a terrible disappointment to my mother", and went on to work for Cavendish, "the HP (hire purchase) people for £2.50 a week for the year 1945-'46."
He didn't like collecting debts from "people who, like the rest of us, were finding it hard to live" so in 1946 applied and got a job with Aer Lingus as a traffic clerk at the then terminus in Cathal Brugha Street. He started on £4.10.0d. per week and, when he left in 1953, was earning £7.0.8d and courting his "intended, Frances Sugrue, a student of home economics in the catering college in Cathal Brugha Street".
He next worked for Gestettner, in Dame Street, as a technical rep. "I got £7.10.0d a week, a luncheon allowance and commission on sales."
He married Frances, got a job with a car with WT Avery, "the weighing scales people", was moved to Waterford, then back to Dublin and, in 1959 with their five children (Louis, Declan, Emer, Frances and Niamh), he and Frances moved into the house in which they still live on Mount Prospect Drive, Clontarf.
He throws in a fascinating detail: "The corporation built it in 1949 at a cost of £2,050 We were renting and by 1969, when I was in a position to buy, it had depreciated and cost £1,510."
The seven-year itch struck and he moved to Goodbodys, was assigned the selling of Colombus/Dixon Industrial Floor Scrubbing and Drying machines and Johnson Wax to commercial outlets, schools and convents. The area of business which would become his for life clicked in.
"I loved the job, because you saw results. You saw a scruffy floor and showed how to clean it. Most of the reverend mothers were parsimonious but the word went round to get in touch with Gerry O'Donoghue and he'd show how to really clean up."
In 1972, by chance, he was sent an English magazine called Cleaning and Maintenance. "On the front a firm called Truvox was advertising a scrub-polisher for £49. I decided I could buy it, and sell for £99. And that, in essence, is what I did!"
Two days before Christmas he got on a British Island Airways 25-seater plane at Dublin Airport and, flying via Exeter, arrived in East Leigh, Southampton and met with Truvox. "I told them I wanted to represent them in Ireland and they said all right. I came back home the same day and subsequently ordered three machines."
Months later, returning from a holiday with Frances, he found "an order from the VEC for two of the machines. I was chuffed; it was the start of an era as far as I was concerned."
He had already "initiated" the business, trading from a Kevin Street premises as EJ Kenny with a friend, Jim Brady, "who was into TVs. This was my first sale for Truvox and I had to set about getting the petrol, oil and detergents and such for the machines."
In 1974 he set up on his own, in a Barna building which cost £99, in the back garden of the family home in Clontarf.
"It was put up in a day and it's still there. There's back lane access to the house. I put all the chemicals in the Barna and kept a small stock of machines. The nuns and brothers all supported me, gave me their business. Being near to God they were near to cleanliness. Schools got a big clean up about three times a year and I showed them how to use the machines, gave great back-up service."
By 1978 the back garden Barna had become too small and he'd bought the stores on Lomond Avenue, Marino.
He was still using British Island to fly in machines, which "took up three-to-four seats. They unfortunately went out of business."
Around this time his first born son, Louis, left the Garda and came on board.
This made for a workforce of four - Gerry, Louis, Gerry Nicell and Lena Hayden, the latter with the company since the Kevin Street days. "She's with us 35 years," Gerry says. "She's a great woman,does everything. We leave her to herself, she's her own boss. She does the bank, everything. Ken Turner joined about 16 years ago, when Gerry Nicell left. Himself and Louis work hand-in-hand. Ken services and delivers, a great lad, he loves the business."
Louis, to whom Gerry "signed things over", is the only one of the O'Donoghue offspring to go into the business. At 6ft 3ins he looks every inch the Garda he once was, and found his way to the cleaning supply business by a less circuitous route than his father.
"I was working for Bachelor's beans for £12 a week," he remembers, "then saw an ad for the guards offering £30 a week. I applied for a bet, and got the job.
"I was 18, young and idealistic. I didn't like not being allowed use my initiative and hated shift work. I was perpetually knackered."
He was glad, he grins, to join the family firm, "even though I knew it meant a major drop in salary".
The business, he says, "has changed a lot. The biggest change is that lots of companies and institutions are using contract cleaners now. Outsourcing like everyone else. We're not going into contract cleaning, so have to keep adapting and changing.
"Our business these days is with smaller companies, like ourselves. We still supply schools, small hospitals and small contract cleaners. It's a tough business because there's huge competition."
They're cultivating a niche for themselves in the eco cleaning market. "We've a nice range of eco products. The company we deal with has been into it for 30 years. A lot of people are aware of the danger with chemicals, especially women, and want things which are friendly and safer. Women school principals want products with less chemicals, they're more aware."
Patiently, with conviction, he explains the need for "less chemicals and more natural enzymes which, when you add water, create bacteria which eats up soiling and so on."
He's got a son and daughter, David and Isabel, neither of whom, as yet, are interested in the company. He's almost shocked to be asked about its future. "I haven't thought about it," he admits, "it's like that in most small businesses."
Which says a lot about the clean and healthy state of business at G O'Donoghue & Son Ltd.
