Trade NamesAn old-style gentleman retailer is moving his clothes shop after 44 years in the Grafton Arcade. Rose Doyle hears how the business was developed

Tom Monaghan, a gentleman retailer if ever there was one, has packed up shop and moved. "Sad to see the place so empty," he says, immaculate in wide, navy-blue pinstripes on his last day in his Grafton Arcade premises, "it was always so well stocked."

Known and regarded the length of Grafton Street, he's been selling high quality clothing with conscientious care for 44 years in the arcade. He's not moving far, just around the corner to a newly refurbished Monaghans in the Royal Hibernian Way - run by his son, Jim, for the last 12 years.

But the move, for Tom Monaghan, has to do with the significance of greater change all around. Departing the Grafton Arcade heralds the end of Grafton Street as he knew it. He's saddened by the demise of a thoroughfare he appreciated the way it was as well as, in a more general way, the end of a personalised way of doing business.

"Grafton Street used to have an elegance, to be the Bond Street of Dublin," he opines, sadly, "we've got too many poor quality honky-tonk shops here now, though Bewleys and Brown Thomas restaurants are still excellent."

Saddened he may be, but is far from defeated. "Most people want to live one life at a time," he says. "I want to live two or three. The day is not long enough."

He was born in Milltown, near Tuam, Co Galway and came to Todd Burns of Mary Street in the 1950s "to learn the business. They employed about 400 people in furniture, retail, wholesale and manufacturing, all under one roof. It was a beautiful building and the nuns across the way in Jervis Street Hospital used come over to recruit us young men as escorts for nurses who didn't have partners for the staff dances."

Such extra-curricular activities were all part of the job. "The nuns were good customers and you had to go - the tickets were free but you paid for the taxi and flowers."

It wasn't long before he was "put on the road" as a commercial traveller. "I did it for about nine years and saw every crossroads and village in Ireland. There was very little merchandise imported at the time and I sold all types of clothing. It was very important to get orders because you had to justify being on the road."

Good things, having a way of leading to better things, so he decided to go into business for himself.

By this time, too, he'd met Teresa Fields, from Kilcock, Co Meath. They were looking together at diagrams for the proposed Grafton Street Arcade, in the Anne Street window of auctioneer/developer Leslie Watson, when the idea of going into business came to him.

"Building started in 1958 and finished in October 1960 and I moved in. Leslie and I became very good friends; we still have a cup of coffee together."

Tom Monaghan married Teresa Fields and worried, for a long time, about the rent, which was £10 per week. "I had to get my two older brothers, farming in Galway, to guarantee me for 10 years," he says. "They would have been out on the road if I'd let them down but I knew I wouldn't. Teresa was very good; she did an awful lot of administration work and gave support and encouragement."

Tom McBride, courteously looking after customers as he helps pack up, has been with Tom Monaghan for 38 years. John Reilly, "who does all the sourcing for us", has been there for 18 years. Early tenants of the arcade included RTV Rentals and a Ms Davis who "sold beautiful ladies dresses and lingerie".

The world, and Grafton Street, was a different place then. Especially on Saturdays.

"Girls paraded up and down in their best clothes and went to the races in the afternoon in the Phoenix Park or Naas. Everyone except Tom Monaghan closed at 1 p.m. on Saturdays - I couldn't afford to. The guards would call but I used open up again after they left. Everyone's open now, even on Sundays."

He sold "everything from Aran sweaters to cashmeres. The Barnes brothers' Glen Abbey was big at the time and were very good to me."

Companies gave him credit without collateral. "It was a big thing with me to pay back creditors and I never faltered, thank God - though I was stuck myself a few times!"

He was "so anxious to do business I'd have done anything to sell; my training was to sell. I'm better known in Scotland, in the town of Hawick, than by suppliers here at home. I've been going there a couple of times a year since the 1960s when there were about 32 knitwear factories. It's down to eight now. Pringle were big suppliers too but they've moved to the Far East."

He had the good fortune, early on, to bring Arrow shirts into the country from the US. "They did beautiful colours and different sleeve lengths. The showbands liked the vibrant colours - pinks and lilacs with tab, button down and rodnor collars. They would come in on Saturday mornings and buy 24 and they all had to be the same colour and design. Shirts everywhere else were 18/6d. but these cost 29/6d."

Business was "hard from the beginning. We had very, very lean years. We had a car but sold it for £300 because we couldn't afford to keep it. When my son, Jim, was born we moved from a basement in Dún Laoghaire to a house in Monkstown where we had to put newspapers on the front window. It took about five years to build up the company. Teresa was very patient with me in the circumstances."

Those different times meant that a £300 overdraft, obtained through a personal contact with the (then)Munster and Leinster Bank, changed things.

"I never used it because things began to come around. The American market began to build and so did loyal support from existing customers. My customers are still loyal. They could have gone elsewhere over the years but they kept coming to Tom Monaghan. You can't buy that kind of loyalty or relationship."

He doesn't think Grafton Street should have been pedestrianised but was the only one who objected. "I liked the buses going up and down. I didn't want major changes and was right because all we got after that was undesirables. They put out seats which had to be removed and the average age of a person on the street dropped to between 12 and 25 though my customers haven't changed much over the years. Christmas gone by was the best trading we'd had in 43 years, despite the fact that we're the only people left in the arcade."

He thinks people have become more selective in their buying habits in this country. "We pride ourselves - not alone on selling quality - but on giving value for money at the same time. No one will educate you as quickly as the man in the street as to whether you're giving value or not."

He always thought the arcade would "be in existence after me but Marks & Spencer, which own the block, wanted everyone out. We had to come to an agreement with them and decided to consolidate in the Hibernian Way. We've another shop in Kilcock, where my in-laws live and which we started in 1975. It was so difficult to build up the business and I was anxious that the Monaghan name should continue - and now it will."

He's adamant about the importance of clothes. "One likes to see a man elegantly dressed. I can't come to work myself without a collar and tie."