Celtic Tweed, a Dublin clothing business, aims to invest €500,000 over the next three years to aid its expansion.
Based in Balbriggan, Celtic Tweed was founded by spouses Cathy and Frank Coghlan in 2012. The business has 14 staff and invested €140,000 into development last year.
“We’re all about making clothing that is going to last a lifetime. Our goal is to deliver clothing that is well made, moulds to your body, fits beautifully and gets better with age,” Cathy Coghlan told the Business Post.
The Coghlans have a long history working in the clothing sector and the idea for Celtic Tweed came from that experience.
“It grew out of a question we were asked at a focus group with businessmen. We were asked if we could make them a suit in Ireland that they’d want to buy. That germinated an idea in our heads as we have 35 years of experience in the industry,” Coghlan said.
“We wanted to bring that skill back to Dublin, and especially to Balbriggan where there’s a heritage going back to the 1800s including making stockings for Queen Victoria. It just seemed right.”
That helped Celtic Tweed to settle on its vision for what the business should be and what it needed to deliver to its customers.
“We wanted to make clothing here and we wanted it to be influenced by Irish history and culture. We started with a poet’s collection of men’s jackets and a heritage collection of more tailored fits.” Coghlan said.
The growth of Celtic Tweed has been a learning experience for Coghlan who has been keen to take customer feedback on board while developing the brand.
“We had to build a team to make it happen. That’s a slow process so we went to market for the first time in 2016. We got a great reaction to the product but not the pricing so we had to rethink it and work out how we could do it better for slightly less,” she said.
“We went back to the market and built the business from there. About 70 per cent of what we sell is exported. When Covid happened, we went online, and people were very supportive.”
Enterprise Ireland is supporting Celtic Tweed and Coghlan said the agency has helped the company substantially.
“They have been about much more than financial support. They have been a partner in our journey. They very much believe in the skill of Irish craftsmanship and the story that can be told globally,” she said.
“Their continued guidance as well as the access, expertise and introductions they can make in local offices with their international presence, is so key to what we do.”
The planned investment over the next three years will help Celtic Tweed scale its business to ensure further growth in international markets.
“We want to offer a really sustainable beautifully crafted fashion collection for people across the world. In particular, we want to connect with the Irish diaspora. The investment will go into building out our team and finding the right people,”
“It will also be used on capital and infrastructure. We’ve grown quite quickly so we need to digitise everything so we can continue to do that. That will help with our international growth.”
This Making it Work article was produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland.