A New Life: John Healy swopped a high-flying career in computers for common-or-garden organics. And he has absolutely no regrets, he tells Sylvia Thompson
The office of organic produce wholesaler John Healy is a small room on the upper floor of his warehouse in Walkinstown, Dublin, where the deliveries of organic vegetables and fruit arrive and depart from every week. It's a far cry from his previous surroundings in the swish suites of multinational software companies.
Mr Healy (51) laughs when asked if he misses the perks of his previous career. "It's not a problem at all. I love my work now because I know every inch of it, unlike when you are working for a large company owned by venture capitalists who don't know anything about the business."
Straight to the heart of the issue. Mr Healy runs Absolutely Organic on what he calls value-based principles.
"Our business is based on trust. We trust the customer to pay, we trust our growers to produce vegetables to the proper standards and we trust our employees to do what they are supposed to do. And our customers trust the produce to be organic because they don't trust the rest of the food chain."
Absolutely Organic supplies boxes of organic vegetables, fruit, pasta, honey, preserves, eggs and breads to over 350 households in Dublin every week as well as to a network of small speciality stores and delicatessens in Dublin and surrounding counties.
However comfortable John Healy is in his new surroundings, he is keen to point out that his career change was not a long-term personal ambition.
"It wasn't a planned target of my life to do this and I do believe there are lots of people running businesses and changing their careers without the change being something that they always wanted to do."
His previous career in the computer industry began when he was a project executive with the Industrial Development Authority (IDA). While there, his job was to attract large multinational software and data processing companies to Ireland. "In the 1980s, I was involved in that dynamic brave new world - including fighting off Switzerland and Britain to bring Microsoft to Ireland," he explains.
After wooing the companies here, he then joined the ranks of Irish people earning their crust from such software companies. "There were a lot of challenges and my work brought me all over Europe, to Russia, French West Africa, the Far East and Australia. Most of this work was selling computer application systems to wholesale and retail banks," Mr Healy says.
His personal bubble burst in 1998 when the company he was working for changed ownership and he lost his job.
Meanwhile, his wife, Anne Marie Sheridan, who had been on a career break to look after their two children, Matthew and Eavan, had started to make deliveries of organic vegetables, working from a neighbour's garage.
The couple made the decision that Anne Marie would go back to her job as a town planner and John would develop the business of a home delivery service of boxed organic vegetables.
"We said we'd see if it worked and if it didn't, I would go back and get another job. The change also meant that I would have time to pick up the children, take them to friends' houses or stay at home with them if they were sick," Mr Healy says.
Almost six years later, he now sees that running his own business is just as hectic as being a high-flying software sales executive, although there is a flexibility and freedom that makes the difference. "There are fewer people in your daily life who have an imbalanced power over you," he says.
His biggest frustration now lies in what he believes to be the lack of promotion of the organic industry in Ireland.
"Ireland probably has the strongest national green and clean brand on the globe but we aren't taking advantage of this. There is a major lack of leadership in this area. I'd like to see an integrated development approach to eco-tourism, the export of organic produce and high environmental standards in agriculture. We have to make sure farming doesn't become 'pharming'.
All in all he's happy with the change, even with the drop in income.
"That has been difficult and this business is very complicated and not very profitable but I get great pleasure from giving people a service that they love with a product which is the best. You simply can't beat nature."
• To contact Absolutely Organic, call 01 4600467 or email info@absolutelyorganic.ie