Maggie Mangan – perfumer and co-founder of Cloon Keen Atelier

What is the most unique thing about your business?

All of our perfumes and candles are handcrafted and made in Ireland. Each fragrance has its own story and is made from luxury ingredients.

Take for example our Castaña perfume. Castaña is Spanish for chestnuts. I developed it as I used to spend a lot of time in Spain as a kid with my parents. I loved the smell there of chestnuts roasting on the street stalls at Christmas.

Our Bataille de Fleurs fragrance is named after a flower festival in the south of France which takes place each year. We sell in shops such as Arnotts in Dublin, but also have our own shop in Galway so we can get direct feedback from customers about our perfumes.

Each perfume takes around two years to develop and our customers keep trying them throughout the development process, telling us what they like and what they don’t like.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in business?

When we first started out we were doing tinned candles. We ordered a huge shipment of tins from China that were very cheap. It was a disaster as they all leaked and molten wax was pouring everywhere as we filled them.

We had to seal 20,000 tins by hand. It was a good lesson to learn – if you’re going to buy something cheap you’ll get cheap results.

What has been your major success to date?

We were selected to be the perfumer for Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Ireland. We created all the products for her private quarters while she stayed here – from soaps to creams, to diffusers and candles.

Les Senteurs in London, which is one of the leading specialist perfumery shops, will be launching our product soon too. It’s exciting as that was the first place I ever smelled a niche perfume and now they will be selling mine.

Who would you admire most in business and why?

In my industry it would have to be Nicky Kinnaird, who is the Belfast-born founder and president of luxury cosmetics and skincare brand Space NK. She had a really clear vision of what she wanted to do and went with it.

She championed niche brands and is now a self-made millionaire. Her products are all over the world. I emailed her once when I was starting out and despite the fact she’s probably one of the busiest women in business she got back to me within 20 minutes. I was really impressed with that.

What piece of advice would you give to the Government to stimulate the economy?

Retailers are really suffering at the moment, especially the smaller retailers. The Government needs to do something about VAT and the upward-only rents. The little guys need protection, yet they are just looking out for the landlords. It’s reminiscent of them protecting the property developers.

Údarás is the one thing that they are doing right, though. There aren’t many countries in the world who provide the support to businesses that Ireland does through organisations like Enterprise Ireland, Údarás, county enterprise boards. I think they deserve a bit of kudos for that.

What would you say has been your biggest challenge?

Getting our products to the point that we can launch them internationally. You need to have several products before you launch internationally and each perfume takes a few years to develop, so it’s taken us a while to get to a position to launch outside of Ireland. I’ve had to sacrifice a lot personally to get to this point. Perfume has been my main focus, night and day – it’s almost like having a child.

How do you see the short-term future of your business?

We are nearing the end of the development stage for our range of perfumes. Exporting is now key to our development.

When we set up initially, we were selling our products in gift shops. Now we are targeting the fashion industry more. We were recently approached by a luxury department store in New York city so we have been in contact with them about our product. We are also launching the product in Japan in November.

What’s your business worth and would you sell it?

I have no idea what it’s worth. I definitely wouldn’t sell it though. It’s my passion in life. I think about it the moment I wake up, the moment I go to bed and every second in between.

In conversation with Pamela Newenham