The Flanagan family of Buncrana kept its business in Donegal going by opening an outlet in an old cinema in the heart of Mount Merrion, Co Dublin. Rose Doyle meets Peter Flanagan.

Flanagans of Buncrana has been charting the change in the nation's needs and taste in furniture and design for almost 60 years now. Since l946, to be exact, when Derryman Jim Flanagan gave up working for Great Universal Stores and Woolworths in Northern Ireland and set up a couple of furniture shops in Derry and Buncrana.

From little acorns great things grow.

Flanagans of Buncrana these days operates best in large spaces. Its Mount Merrion furniture emporium has 1,858 sq 20,000 sq ft of rambling split level floors. The furniture centre it is about to move into in Buncrana has 8,732 sq m (94,000 sq ft), the biggest such in the country according to Peter Flanagan who, as a director with his brother Brian, should know about these things.

They're also a company which likes to occupy buildings with links to the past. The Buncrana centre was once the home of Fruit of the Loom, their Dublin outlet was once the much loved Stella Cinema.

Emporium is the only word for the Flanagan set-up in Mount Merrion; emporium in the grand and dazzling sense used by the Victorians for a centre of commerce. In the one-time Stella Cinema you can wander up, down, in and around the antique showroom and piano department, rug department and classic furniture showroom, bed department, curtain gallery and more.

Peter Flanagan, the 6ft2inch self-described "baby of the family", is a man who wears his roots firmly on his sleeve. His accent is pure Donegal, his philosophy securely based in a sense of continuity and on where he and the family come from. He tells the Flanagan story with an ear to detail and an eye to the future.

There is a business and entrepreneurial gene common to both sides of the family. "My grandfather dealt a little in antiques in Derry," he says, "and my mother's people were the Barr's of Buncrana, who owned the Plaza Ballroom, started the Lough Swilly bus service and had the White Strand Motor Inn (one of the first motels around) as well as Barr's Construction. All of those businesses are sold now except for the Plaza Ballroom."

The good news about the Plaza is that Brian Flanagan has managed, at a cost of €1.4million and with the help of a group of local people, to save it for use as a much needed Local Youth Community Project. But sin sceal eile, as they say in Donegal and elsewhere.

May and Jim Flanagan had four children. Brian was their first born. Then came Joan, Edward and baby Peter. Brian and Peter are partners in the business and Edward, an accountant, gives his expertise part-time. Joan lives in Navan.

Brian it was who began growing the company to what it is today. He'd been studying philosophy in UCD when, in the early 1970s, he started to buy and sell British Army supply furniture. "He bought bunk beds, silver plated cutlery, RAF officer supply furniture," Peter explains, "all of it of superb quality but functional. My father came up to Dublin at weekends to help and, because the one thing furniture needs is space, they took over the old Stella cinema which had closed and was lying idle."

Within a few years the family had bought the Stella cinema premises and, in a few more years, Brian Flanagan had built up a team of restorers and craftspeople in Buncrana.

"Today, in Buncrana, we've a 25/26-person strong team working in upholstery, cabinet making, French polishing, wood carving," Peter says. The imminent move into the ex-Fruit of the Loom factory is "a dream come true" for the company. "We'll have everything under one roof and on one level," Peter Flanagan says. "I only wish my father was alive to see it, to see the scale his little acorn has grown to!"

Flanagans are selling their old premises in the Irwin Shirt factory as well as the Swilly Hotel to fund the move. "It's really the Dublin market which keeps us going," Peter says. "The local market in Buncrana couldn't sustain us. We've a lot of loyal customers who come from all over the country."

Peter Flanagan came to Dublin in l982 to work in the business for the summer. He'd intended studying law but found, very quickly, that retailing suited him better. He married Yvonne, a Dubliner, and they have four children, sons Michael and John and daughters Ellen and Isabelle. Brian Flanagan, who lives in Buncrana, has five children, one of whom, Andrew, has already joined the company.

"In l982," Peter goes on, "we were only using the ground floor, which was basically a slope without the cinema seats. We've now as great a diversity of goods in the building as there were once films. In l982, about 90 percent of what we sold was antique and second-hand furniture. Then it was those with most money who came looking for second-hand bargains, wanting an investment and long-term value. The people with least money bought on credit to get lesser quality.

"What has changed is that people are now going for a more coordinated look in their homes as property values increase. We now work with interior designers and architects both on domestic and contract work.

"Back in l982, customers came because they needed something individual, a diningroom table or set of kitchen chairs. Now we're being asked to custom-make a solid cherrywood kitchen table to match similar presses, perhaps with painted legs and chairs with black leather seats to match black, polished granite worktops.Things have gone full circle to 19th century times, when a wealthy merchant class would go to cabinet makers and have pieces made for their homes."

Trading in second-hand furniture really ended, he says, because of low-price imports from the Far East. "We can now get a walnut Regency-style circular one-leaf extension table which will seat eight people and sell it for €595. That's a lower price than we were able to get a second-hand equivalent 15 years ago. We have leather couches selling for €700 that can be cheaper than the cost of recovering a couch."

Flanagans has developed the business in other ways too. Its designers have helped customers completely furnish homes bought in places like Spain, Portugal and, new this year, the south of France - and the company will ship the lot out so "people can arrive, walk in and start living in their new home. We find we're more and more involved in project managing furnishing problems," says Peter.

For 20 years Flanagans used to open for business on Sundays. "We found we were becoming slaves to the business, so four years ago we went for a six-day week with a late night on Thursday. Our turnover dropped and it took us 12 months to catch up but it was worth it. The quality of life has improved for everyone involved with the shop."

Flanagans has two interior designers in its Dublin showroom who will advise on anything from a livingroom to an apartment block. In its, classic furniture showroom, Flanagans sells reproduction furniture sourced in "the best furniture fairs in the world. We've such a diversity of choice here that our interior designers and sales team can customise any project to suit." "We've about 50 people employed between Dublin and Buncrana," Peter concludes.

"It's always a challenge to pass a business on to the next generation - they have to be inspired and enthused." For now, at any rate, neither quality is in short supply in Mount Merrion.