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Gahan Meats Factory Outlet

‘Learn from those that have gone before’ is a great business maxim and with that in mind I headed out to meet the team at Gahan Meats and to see what Sponsor for a Day meant to them and if it was good for their business.

Gahan Meats won the inaugural Bank of Ireland Sponsor for a Day competition and their company name was emblazoned across the Leinster Rugby jersey for the Heineken Cup game against Ospreys on January 17th, 2014.

Nigel and Veronica Gahan

I met with Nigel Gahan, Sales Manager and Veronica Gahan, Financial Controller, at their HQ and factory outlet shop in Finglas. The first thing to strike you on entering both the shop and HQ is the framed Gahan Meats Leinster Rugby jerseys. They sit proudly on the walls and are accompanied by other memorabilia from the big day. The second thing that strikes you is that close on one year on, the excitement of winning the competition and the whole match day experience is still very much alive.

Nigel Gahan

As Nigel put it, “we were thrilled to win the competition but we never imagined the significance of the win until we saw the mascot and team walk out onto the pitch with Gahan Meats as the shirt sponsor.” And to reinforce the point, Veronica added, “we are a family run business and this was without a doubt a very special day in the long history of the business, especially for a business of our size.”

The one thing we all agreed on was that it was a stroke of genius by Bank of Ireland in coming up with the #SponsorForADay competition concept. For a period of just over four weeks they had ten companies, five in Leinster and five in Munster, battling it out to win the competition, all referring to Bank of Ireland across all their respective marketing channels.

 

Nigel Gahan and Michael O’Brien

For Gahan Meats their business certainly received a lift. The brand exposure from the game and the follow up media reporting helped to boost sales. Thousands of people, both at the game and sitting at home or in the pub, had never heard of Gahan Meats so they all took to Google to see who these guys were. Safe to say that Gahan Meats is now a well known brand. Job done!

Marc O'Dwyer

After completing a Graduate program in Marketing, Marc’s impressive sales career began at Allied Irish Banks, Pitney Bowes and Panasonic where he received numerous Irish and European sales performance awards and consistently exceeded targets and expectations. In 1992, Marc’s entrepreneurial spirit led him to set up his own business, Irish International Sales (IIS). Initially, this company was a reseller for Take 5 Accounts and Payroll software. Within four years, IIS became the largest reseller of Take 5 in Ireland, acquiring four other Take 5 resellers. He also found time to set up two mobile phone shops under the Cellular World brand and a web design company offering website design services for small businesses. In 2001, he bought the majority share in a small Irish software business, Big Red Book. At that time, the company was losing money. The company became profitable within two months, and Marc then acquired a payroll company to compliment Big Red Books Accounting products. In 2003, IIS were appointed as Channel Partners with SAP for their new SME product, SAP Business One. Marc sold his Take 5 business and concentrated on developing this new market for SAP As a result, by 2007, IIS was recognised as the largest Channel Partner for SAP in EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa). In 2008, the IIS Sales Manager bought the Company from Marc in an MBO. He launched Big red cloud in June 2012, the online version of big red book, to date the company successfully converts 59% of trials into sales and the number of customers is growing rapidly. Marc continues to run both Big Red Book and Big Red Cloud which now support 75,000 businesses. He is a very keen sportsman, having played rugby for 20 years, represented Leinster at under 16 and under 20 levels, and league squash with Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club for 10 years. Marc has competed in 11 Marathons, including the London and Boston Marathons, and has completed several Triathlons and Half Ironman races. He has also completed six Ironman Races in Austria(x2), Frankfurt (Germany), Nice (France) , Mallorca (Spain) and Copenhagen (Denmark)