In the Hot Seat

IN THE

HOT SEAT

with Rachel O’Connor

Interviewed by Sinead Ronan

Public Affairs Manager at County Kildare Chamber

Next year General Paints Group will celebrate 70 years in business. Tell me more about the company and what sets you apart from your competition?

GPG was founded May 1953 by my grandfather Ronan. He was a chemical engineer and after graduating he moved to San Francisco where he worked in a paint factory for many years. The company eventually asked him to move to Mexico to set up a new branch of the business. He almost took the job, but thought to himself, well if I’m going to open a paint factory why not do it at home. So, he moved home and in 1953 set up General Paints Group in Celbridge. At the time, there were a handful of employees, and everything was done manually. Things over the last 70 years have modernised, but the essentials of mixing materials together to create the products haven’t changed. My father, Kevin, took over in the business in the 1980’s and he was Managing Director for 35 years. He is a chemist by background, and continued Ronan’s legacy of making only the highest quality paint. He also focused on marketing and building the Colourtrend brand through TV advertising. Kevin retired in February 2020, and I then stepped into the role of MD. Our parent company is General Paints Group, or GPG, but we are best known for our brands Colourtrend and Curator. We sell Colourtrend paint through 170 stockists throughout Ireland and seven company owned stores. Our flagship store is in Celbridge, and we also have a Newbridge store. Many of our stockists share similar ethos and values to us; they are family-owned, independent businesses who have strong connections to their communities. We also export to the UK and the US and are currently working with Enterprise Ireland on exporting to the EU market. We have recently moved into the online space, selling primarily to the domestic market in Ireland, the UK and the US.

General Paints Group has changed a lot over the last 70 years. Where would you like to see the future direction of the company go?

A project we are currently working on is to tell the GPG story to all of our stakeholders, whether that is our employees, our customers, our suppliers and the communities we are located in. I am biased but we have a really good story to tell! We have a lovely company culture and family heritage here, which is something I am very proud of. We also have the ambition of becoming a B-Corporation, which is a business that has a positive impact on all stakeholders and is a leader in ESG and Sustainability. It is a very rigorous process to become a B-Corporation, it will take a couple of years to get there, and it is a key part of our strategic plan.

Head Quarters for GPG is a former famine workhouse, and a historic gem. How are you planning on using this space into the future?

The building is a big part of our identity as a company. A line drawing of the workhouse appears on all our Colourtrend products and marketing material. We have been slowly renovating it over the years, and our offices which were completed just over a year ago are a great example of combining the old historical building with modern architecture. We would like to open the building up to the public more, especially around Heritage week and Culture night. It has a sad but fascinating story to tell, and we have worked with a local historian to understand the building and the many people who lived there since 1841. It was originally built as a workhouse, was later a TB hospital, it housed Belgian refugees during WW1, and was used by the Free State Army directly after the War of Independence, so the building itself has a lot of history in the walls and shows glimpses of different parts of our past as a country. All of our operations are located within the building; our production plant, our warehouse and our distribution centre, which we are in the process of modernising.

In February 2020 you took over the role of Managing Director of GPG. At the height of a worldwide pandemic, this must have been a baptism of fire?

Yes, it was! We were one of the fortunate companies, in that there was such high demand for home improvement projects over that last two years. Our challenge has been managing our supply chain, as we source raw materials from all over the world. In 2020 raw material availability was an issue, so our lead times went from weeks to months. In 2021 and this year the price of raw materials has gone up hugely. It has been a baptism of fire, but I have really enjoyed it and learned a lot. We have fantastic people within the business and a great leadership team, and that’s why I enjoy going to work in the morning.