MN217 project

Ray Dowling is the owner of RKD Borrow Display, a business that started in 1977. They initially focused on landscaping and floral displays, but later diversified into wedding displays and oak barrels for pubs. They gained a reputation for their ability to customize displays with logos. The business was subsidized through reserves and additional finance. Word-of-mouth and social media played a role in advertising. There is currently no exit plan as it is a family business and the owner still has ideas to contribute. Hi, my name is Robert Curran, and I'm here with Ray Dowling, owner of RKD Borrow Display. Firstly, I just wanted to know a little bit about your background. When did you first set up the business, and what made you want to set up the business? Okay, my father set up the business in 1977. He was involved in construction, and it was around the time his father had still been on a farm around the salvage area. And he'd seen an opportunity to start doing landscaping, and he started doing landscaping gardens. Then he saw the further option in floral displays. He was doing floral displays in residential gardens, and then he started doing them in pubs and other kind of commercial enterprises. That's really where the business grew from. I joined the business in 2002. I'm the operations manager, and I've been there ever since. What new innovative ideas did you create to continue growing the business? The first one, the core of the business, is customer service and value. We're well-known throughout the sector, and well-known throughout the communities, particularly around salvage, renewals and lease-up, for providing a fantastic service and for providing fantastic values. That's been the kind of basis, the core of what we do. But because we were involved in landscaping and floral displays, a lot of that is seasonal work. I felt that we had to diversify into different areas. One of the areas we got involved in, believe it or not, was wedding displays. We do a lot of florist wedding displays, which is indoor. We had a good reputation doing that. We grew the business off of that. Then, believe it or not, we got into the oak barrels that you see in a lot of pubs, particularly around Dublin City. We started doing a lot of that. We started doing the residential for residential people who have a back garden. You might want to build a small bar or something in the back garden. Then we extended that into pubs. We do a lot of social clubs. We do a lot of sporting clubs as well, like Barnhill Rugby Club, for example. Nobody would have a lot of these. We gained a reputation for it. What made us unique was, in relation to that aspect of the business, we were able to take any logo, any logo to give us whatsoever, and we could apply that individually. We developed a reputation for that. I'm glad to say we're now the number one in the country in relation to that area. The key for us, the core thing, is with regard to good service and value for money. Out of that, then, we diversified a lot of services that we were providing on this call. How did you subsidise this new, innovative idea? Was it through finance or existing capital? Good question. Well, we had some reserves put in the business, which we used. Of course, we had to go off and get some additional finance. Because of the structure that opened the business, we put down a financial structure to the business. We found it easier to actually borrow money from the banks, which wasn't easy for a lot of small businesses at the time. So we had reserves, and we got additional money. What forms of advertising did you use to create an awareness for your brand? The basic form of advertising was, like a lot of small businesses, word-of-mouth. As I said before, we built up a good reputation within the sector, and that reputation was word-of-mouth. Then, obviously, we got involved and looked at new forms of marketing. We were involved in social media. We set up a website as well. We started it locally initially. But to be honest with you, it's the service we provide, and a lot of our business is word-of-mouth. Do you have an exit plan in regards to selling the business? Well, my father set up the business in 1977 and is still involved, very actively involved in the business. So the answer to your question is no, not at this stage. I still think I have a lot of years left myself to contribute to the business. I have a lot of other ideas that I want to bring to the business and diversify the business further. But at this moment in time, no, we have no exit plan. We are a family business. At some stage, myself and my sisters also want the business, and we can handle the business. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.