Kleerex International is the perfect example of a company which has transformed its business by harnessing that most elusive of forces - innovation. A decade ago, the company which is now the market leader in the manufacture of acrylic-based shop fixtures found in most Irish stores, was small, manufacturing leaflet holders and signs - both areas with minimal growth potential. There were several other companies producing identical items, growth prospects were slim and no one seemed willing to break out of uniform design ideas. However, late in 1987 the company (including the original founders Mr Frank Carrol, Mr Gerry Higgins and Mr Aidan McMurrow) decided to introduce innovation in the most unlikely of areas - supermarket shelving.

The end result was a major growth in business, with the company now employing 90 people at its headquarters in Baldoyle, Co Dublin. Last week Kleerex was named the first overall winner of the Price Waterhouse - The Irish Times Innovation awards. The awards were also sponsored by Forfas, as part of its Science and Technology programme.

For over 30 years, shelving in supermarkets and other food outlets had been awkward, uniformly dull and worst of all, often got in the way of the proper display of products.

Kleerex decided to end all this. After tasting partial success with a "pic-n-mix" binning system, they made a major breakthrough with the next product, a multi-tiered magazine rack system, which had never been seen before in retail outlets.

The product was a huge success and soon became an industry standard. It is now present in 16,000 outlets in Britain and Ireland.

Its success helped the company increase its turnover from approximately £1 million in 1990 to £3 million in 1993.

By this time ICC had come aboard with a 27 per cent stake and this, along with BES funding, encouraged the company to increase its R&D facilities and diversify into a number of product lines, many of them new to the market.

Soon Kleerex had a presence in thousands of Irish convenience and forecourt stores, where the unique selling point of their acrylic merchandising systems (shop fixtures) was that it let products stand out. Managing Director, Mr Michael Ryan explained: "Our fixtures tend to be placed in what are called high impulse areas in the shop, like the confectionery or magazines section, and we are most happy if the customer sees the product and not our shelves."

Mr Ryan said the essence of innovation for Kleerex is the relationship between the customer and the Kleerex's R&D department.

"We don't impose designs on people, the retailer gives us a brief of what they want and our design team then goes off to give shape to that".

Among the work done by the R&D department is designing the fixtures so that they take up as little space as possible. But the main effort is in trying to customise the fixtures for the retailer.

By the end of 1997, Kleerex had built up ongoing business with all the major Irish supermarkets, including Dunnes Stores, Superquinn and Quinnsworth.

According to Mr Ryan, the large multiples were most impressed with the "refreshing" designs produced by the company.

Like any good idea, it is hard to keep it to oneself, he says. Kleerex was hampered at times by problems with protecting the patent of their various products.

In recent years, Mr Ryan said, "a willingness to fight infringement actions was instrumental in keeping a competitive edge".

While the company was maintaining its appetite for diversification and expansion, this was not only in product design and manufacture.

"It didn't take us long to realise that if our products could display goods in Irish stores, why not further afield." Export-driven growth has taken place over the last two years and Kleerex now names companies like BP, Esso, Texaco, Safeway, Asda and Sainsbury among its British customer base.

The future for the company is in exporting, particularly to Germany, which has less stringent patent protections than the Republic. "Germany is a new market and different in some ways, but it gives us the chance to develop an international set of products that can be introduced into any store," said Mr Ryan. He also plans a major assault on the Dutch market.

Kleerex has recently established a sales office in Germany and formed strategic alliances with a major shopfitter network for sales and distribution throughout the country.

The company has also licensed the manufacture and sale of their products in mid-west USA and is currently negotiating further licences elsewhere in the US and Australia.

As for the future, with a continuing relationship with shopfitters in the Republic and continuing support from the Irish Trade Board, Mr Ryan said the company hoped to increase its turnover by 20 per cent over the next three years.