14|Retail News|July/August 2012|www.retailnews.ie
Retail News Interview In his first interview since taking the reins of PJ Carroll last year, Steven Donaldson talks about how to tackle the illicit trade, the changing tobacco consumer and how we need to alter the way we think about tobacco control.
Steven Donaldson, General Manager, PJ Carroll.
Steven’s Day PJ Carroll has been operating in Ireland for almost 200 years. It was 1824 when Patrick James Carroll set up his first tobacco shop in Dundalk, Co. Louth, and the intervening decades have seen the company grow to become one of Ireland’s best known companies. General Manager Steven Donaldson has been part of PJ Carroll since the end of the last century, and indeed, has spent his entire working life with the company, having began providing holiday cover in the despatch department, before going on to work as a marketing intern during his college days “I’ve pretty much done most roles in the business at this stage,” he smiles. The majority of Steven’s time with PJ Carroll, and its parent company,
British American Tobacco (BAT), has been spent in the areas of sales and marketing, including managing marketing teams in Ireland, the UK and Switzerland (“getting to see other tobacco markets and how they contrast with the Irish market was very interesting”). March 2011 saw Steven return to Ireland to take up the role of General Manager at PJ Carroll, a mere week before the company conference, which he refers to as a “baptism of fire”. Now, however, the GM can look back on his first 16 months in charge with a degree of satisfaction. “The environment is tough but the business has performed well,” he smiles. “There has been a lot of change
in market dynamics, consumer-wise, and we have been able to capitalise on that with some of our brands.” While admitting that the corporate and regulatory affairs side of the business provided a steep learning curve, Steven, who is also serving as Chairman of ITMAC (The Irish Tobacco Manufacturers’ Advisory Committee), has relished the opportunity to “work with political stake-holders, work with key Government agencies, getting them to understand the problems facing the industry at the moment.”
The ‘R’ Factor
Part of the BAT family since 1998, Steven sees PJ Carroll adopting a