For Aidan Morgan of AM Hurleys & Sports, securing €5,000 in cash and €5,000 in products and services, in the form of a Three Grants for Small Businesses one was like joining a winning team.
Morgan is from Ardaghy in Co Monaghan and having played senior hurling at both club and county level was a skilled athlete who had always fixed his equipment.
“I had a hurley in my hand from a very young age. GAA is bred into you. You’re bred to love the colours of your own club and not like the colours of your neighbours’ club from when you’re knee high,” he says.
As a teenager, he was the guy who would repair cracks and splits in his friends’ hurleys. “Fixing hurleys was my hobby,” says Morgan.
He spent most of his competitive career as a goalie, “the mad position”, as he calls it.
“My wife’s head would be in her hands watching but the way I looked at it, when a ball’s coming at you at 100 mph, you’re going to want to stop it hitting you,” he laughs.
Now 44, after his on-pitch career was over he stayed actively involved, coaching and managing the senior team at his club, Clontibert and coaching for the Monaghan senior hurlers.
“You do it because you love the sport and you love to see progression. I had coaches that I’d still look up to today and you’d be hoping to do the same for the next generation,” he says.
In 2015 he secured a full-time coaching job with Monaghan GAA.
“I was out on the road visiting schools, coaching hurling to kids, my dream job. I did three years and loved it but when my wife Gemma was going back to work full-time after the birth of our second son, I realised I would just be working to pay the childminder for our two boys.”
By that stage, he was already back fixing and making hurleys from a workshop at the side of his house on a not-for-profit basis.
He decided he would stay at home and mind the children, making hurleys while his older son was at school and the baby was sleeping. “I had a baby monitor in the workshop,” he explains.
Today the boys are 13 and five, and his infant hurley making business has grown from strength to strength. He registered the business in 2019 and began to concentrate on it in earnest but when Covid came, everything stopped.
“I had the workshop but people could no longer call up to me. So I said to Gemma, I need a website,” he says.
He worked remotely with a web developer and built one that went live in a matter of weeks. It transformed the business, leading to orders from across the country.
He extended his product offering to meet demand. “We started adding equipment for soccer, rugby, basket basketball and tennis — everything and anything,” says Morgan.
By the end of 2022, he had rented a retail and commercial unit in a nearby business park.
Winning a €10,000 Three Grant for Small Businesses helped enormously. “The biggest thing for us was that both myself and Gemma, who does all our social media, were able to get mobile phones. We also got a landline for the business, which has been a breath of fresh air. It means people don’t call me out of business hours so I’m able to spend more time with the kids in the evenings,” he says.
Morgan also expanded the business to include teamwear, launching his own brand of sportswear, Ignite23.
He then used a portion of the cash prize to update his website and make it easier for customers to navigate.
“The improvements give a much better user experience. Most of our sales come from schools and clubs and it’s easier than ever for us to price up an order and ship it out,” he explains.
Having a strong online presence, including social media, is vital. About 65 per cent of revenues come as bulk orders from clubs and schools. “They find us on Facebook and Instagram first, then go to the website. It’s digital that drives your customers to you,” he says.
As befits someone devoted to coaching, it’s watching the performance of his business improve that gives him his greatest buzz. “The money is one thing but really it’s about the growth,” he says.
It was his wife Gemma who suggested he apply for a Three Small Businesses Grant. “She sent me the link and I filled it out but didn’t give it a thought until I got a call to say I was on the shortlist,” he says.
Then, true to form, his competitive instincts kicked in. “All of a sudden, I wanted to win,” he explains. “I just knew it could do so much for the business, that it would help to drive us on. Amhurleys.ie
- Three’s Grants for Small Businesses 2023 programme is now taking applications until midnight Monday, October 2nd. Find out more at 3.ie/grants