FUTURE PROOF: Beacon Designs:An Irish knitwear firm has survived in a tough market by diversifying, investing in modern plant and consistently producing striking designs
IN TWO YEAR’S time, Bebhinn Marten’s knitwear company, Beacon Designs, will be 40 years old. In that time, it has survived the Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq, four local recessions and the collapse of the Celtic Tiger – all of which had an impact on its international and domestic sales.
Add to that, competition from cheaper imports, fluctuating domestic tourism numbers and the demise of many small craft shops and it is surprising that Beacon Designs is still standing. What has ensured its survival is a combination of rationalisation; investment in modern plant and processes; timely diversification; and Marten’s consistency in producing striking designs that people want to buy.
Marten came up the hard way, which possibly helps explain her tenacity in business. At the age of just 15, she was apprenticed to Cork courtier, Elizabeth James, who made gowns for the leading fashionistas of the day including Princess Grace of Monaco. This was a perfectionist environment where Marten honed her skills as a seamstress and mistakes were docked from her £2 pay packet at the end of the week.
From there she moved into the knitwear industry and subsequently set up Beacon Designs on her kitchen table in Baltimore, west Cork, in the mid 1970s.
Her first garment was a woollen sailing sweater and, almost four decades later, it remains a mainstay product.
“It is still popular with sailors but also with those who earn their living outdoors, like ESB linesmen and forestry workers, as it holds its warmth but is not bulky to wear,” Marten says. “Over the years, we made this jumper for groups such as sailing clubs and for corporate clients (and one along similar lines for the ski industry) but when outsourcing became the norm in the clothing business in Ireland, that put paid to that.”
As bigger producers turned to outsourcing to contain costs, Marten continued to produce in west Cork. “We had no choice as we were too small to outsource and, anyway, I like making things. But outsourcing made things very difficult, as our prices were high by comparison. Retailers could buy finished garments for less than I was paying for the raw materials.”
To compensate for the fall-off in its contract business, Marten began looking outside traditional knitwear for a new product range. What she came up were fashion knits with a high level of design content that sell at the upper end of the market. To ensure she got the transition right, Marten worked with leading high street fashion designer, Helen McAlinden, to produce a box jacket made from 100 per cent wool. Boiled wool coats and elaborate cardigans followed.
The vibrancy and daintiness of these designs attracted an unexpected following among Japanese women who bought Marten’s products in places such as Harrods. Today, Beacon exports to Scotland, the Netherlands, France and North America. It does not sell online as Marten says its retail customers demand exclusivity.
“The Gulf War of 1990 had a big impact on international travel and our sales to Japanese tourists were badly affected,” Marten says. “Then US tourism to Ireland was hit by the Iraq war in 2003 and this really affected our customer base as so many craft shops closed and never reopened.”
Beacon maintained its workforce of 10 people up to the early 2000s but eventually the jobs became unsustainable. The company returned to its roots as a family concern and is now run by Marten, her husband Robert and their son, Olan, who is trained in textiles. Daughter-in-law, Paula, works with Marten on product design.
Beacon has always done a certain amount of contract knitting and own label now accounts for around 40 per cent of its turnover.
In an ironic twist of fate, customers who took their business overseas in the 1990s are coming back to Beacon as they can no longer afford to buy in the quantities required by the big textile producers in the Far East and elsewhere.
Keeping costs under control has been a priority for the company and one of the ways it has done this is by changing how it orders raw materials. “We stopped buying direct and moved to suppliers who offer a stock service. This allows us to buy 100 sets of buttons instead of 500. On high value items this could mean a bill of €20,000 instead of €100,000.
“We also invested in modern knitting machines and CAD [computer aided design] and set up the shop floor in a way that makes it easy to expand in the future. We also introduced ‘just in time’ manufacturing, which is a little unusual in the textiles industry,” Marten says.
More recently Beacon has carved out a new niche as the knitter of choice for young designers setting up clothing businesses.
“We can run small quantities for them and Olan is a wizard at translating their designs into programmes to run on our machines,” Marten says. “Becoming very efficient in how we design and manufacture has been central to our survival. We have probably cut the time it takes to make and finish a garment in half without compromising on the look or the quality.
“This is a gradual tweaking process doing small things like having three buttons instead of five or making changes to a design that allow it to be produced faster.”
