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A 22-acre new business
park dedicated exclusively to Irish fashion wholesalers has seen the Irish rag
trade move almost lock, stock and barrel from Dublin city centre to Ballymount
on the M50.
Fashion City will
be officially launched at the end of the month by model and Rod Stewart's ex-wife,
Rachel Hunter.
Fed up with rising
city centre rents, no parking, no room to expand and no adequate space to show
the new collections to buyers, a group of eight Irish wholesalers approached a
number of developers with a view to developing a dedicated "fashion park"
along the lines of similar developments in Germany and Holland. The initial reaction
though was less than encouraging.
"I suppose
the rag trade does not have a good track record so developers were quite wary.
They wanted the group to form a company and just deal with the one entity,"
says Dermot Kelly, managing director of fashion wholesalers Bellina Creations.
In the end, the
group struck a deal with Park Developments, which seemed happy enough to deal
with the individual business people, and also had a suitable 22-acre site in Ballymount,
right on the M50.
As soon as word
got around, most fashion wholesalers who were based around the South William Street
and South Frederick Street area in Dublin city centre followed.
Over 30 units at
Fashion City have been sold, generating Euro35 in sales for the developers. "We
are now looking for planning permission for a fourth phase, eventually bringing
the whole project to a Euro55m-Euro65m scale," says Donal Caulfield, general
manager of Park Developments (Commercial).
The idea is to
establish a critical mass of wholesalers who have show-rooms, warehousing and
office space all under one roof - something that was not possible in the centre
of Dublin.
"We had two
showrooms and offices on Clarendon Street and a warehouse in Cookstown. It was
seriously hampering the growth of our business. We couldn't really take on any
more brands and show them properly," Kelly says. Bellina moved into its three
storey, 18,000 sq ft facility in July.
"We just showed
the spring/summer 2004 range and the buyers really liked the set-up. A lot of
them had stopped driving up to Dublin, but they are starting to again. It's easy
access to all the wholesalers they need to see, and the ample parking makes a
difference," Kelly says.
To service Bellina's
Northern Ireland customers, the company had to make regular trips to the North
and hire hotel rooms - which Kelly says is not the most professional way to show
a collection.
The list of tenants
reads like a who's who of Irish fashion, and Fashion City genuinely seems to have
given the whole industry a major boost.
"I suppose
it's very unusual to get 20 competitors together to do something like this, and
on this scale. Normally,
this is a cut-throat business," says Colm O'Rourke of importer and retailer
Fashionhouse.
O'Rourke is generally
credited with driving the project, and Fashionhouse is the largest tenant with
43,000 sq ft of office space, show rooms and warehousing.
Again, prior to
moving to Fashion City, Fashionhouse had offices and showrooms in the city centre,
and a warehouse near the airport.
A separate office
block for fashion agents on site means there is going to be pressure on those
wholesalers who have remained in town to make the move.
"You'll never
get everyone to move, and there may be valid reasons for people not to move -
there may be rent resistance, or they don't have the capital to buy a unit here,"
O'Rourke says.
In an industry
where margins are traditionally low and banks are not particularly supportive,
moving to Fashion City could be a considerable investment for a small operator.
Kelly, for example,
invested Euro1.5m in Bellina's new home, including the fit-out. O'Rourke is convinced
that the concept of competitors getting together to create a critical mass is
something that other industries could easily emulate. "You can't
even begin to quantify the synergies and efficiencies of being here."
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