Aaron O’Grady is showing me around his cavernous hub just off the M50 in Ballymount, south Dublin, and it is hard not to be impressed by both the scale and the substance. Stretching to 30,000 square feet, the base for his business Vision Creative Studios houses multiple businesses, a design centre, a collaboration area, and co-working spaces.

O’Grady bounces between its three floors, greeting some of the 50 people who work for him, as well as showing me everything from 3D printers to fully fitted out show kitchens. There is even a room full of buddabags made from high-end memory foam. It is hard to keep up at times, as O’Grady moves his laptop around, showing me via its camera the array of enterprises he is backing or hosting.

When O’Grady settles down to tell his story in a meeting room, it is one of resilience – of a business almost felled by the pandemic, but one that picked itself up and started moving forward again. The first quarter of 2020 opened strongly for Creative Studios, with its revenue on course to hit €12 million that year, up from almost €9 million the previous year. At the start of March 2020, two big hires had started in the business – Donnach O’Donohoe, a former commercial sales manager with Avoca Handweavers and country head with Adidas, and Mark Gray, formerly of Vita Materials in Belfast, who joined as product design manager. But by the end of March – as the construction industry, fit-out sector, showrooms, design, innovation and other sectors went into lockdown, Vision Creative Studios saw its revenues fall by 90 per cent. Nearly all its customers froze projects, while tenants who shared the building with it, all faced their own similar crises.

“There was a tsunami of problems, issues and crises,” O’Grady said. A member of his team then died suddenly from non-Covid-19 related reasons. “Morale was at an all-time low,” he said. “We had very small cash reserves. I was advised by all my friends and senior consultants to close the business. Let everyone go. Conserve cash and wait until the storm has passed…. but I was never very good at doing what I was told.”

This is the story of how O’Grady and his team reinvented their business and survived.

“A Willie Wonka shopping space for designers”

Aaron O’Grady

Aaron O’Grady is 45 years old, with over 20 years of experience in construction, design and interior fit-out. He studied English and Spanish at Trinity College Dublin, as well as graphic design in Bolton Street. He got his first job as a sign and display maker with his father’s family signage business. Around the same time, he set up Vision Branding in 1996 and started working with small to large businesses. In 2003 a friend of his from Texas who was developing luxury properties in Las Vegas asked him to help out. “I got the bug for construction then,” he said.

The experience of seeing the best of American design got him thinking about sourcing the best products from Italy and around the world and bringing them to Ireland. When he got back, he picked up Vision Branding again and started working on interior branding projects for office fitouts, retail, exhibitions, hotels and bars. Over time the business expanded into the UK and started working with construction companies, architects and other designers on creating unique developments for blue-chip clients like Google, MasterCard, Aon, CBRE, Intel and Dropbox.

Vision often got its first contract in Ireland, and then followed these companies as they pushed into Europe. O’Grady’s business was now generating millions of euros in sales.

He knew he needed to learn more about business, and in 2010 he won a scholarship in a competition run by The Sunday Business Post to study in the Irish Management Institute. This led to him repeatedly returning there, and he now has an MA in International Business. “I had the practical experience, but the IMI – and travelling to places like Germany and Dubai to see exhibitions and design trends – helped me to keep up with what was happening in business internationally,” he said.

About three years ago, O’Grady opened Vision Creative Studios in Ballymount. The idea was to be able to show both office and residential clients a quality showroom experience. At the same time, there were workshops, laser machines, 3D printers, design studios and so on in different parts of the building creating what O’Grady fondly describes as a “Willie Wonka shopping space for designers”.

It is a fascinating building with areas dedicated to acoustic panels, fabrics, printing – and even in one area graffiti, where the artist collective Subset is based. With residential developers and office builders requiring ever greater attention to detail and quality, O’Grady with his diverse range of revenue streams seemed well-positioned for the coming years as his business continued to grow in the run-up to Covid-19.

A pandemic reinvention

The arrival of Covid-19 required O’Grady and his team to reinvent themselves for the new world of remote working and the abrupt freezing of different parts of the construction sectors as infection numbers rose. “It was fight or flight,” O’Grady said. “I decided to fight. I wanted to be able to say even if we failed, I did my absolute best. I have nothing left, there is nothing more I could have done to save the business.” O’Grady talked to his team about what they could do to make money. “We knew we couldn’t feel sorry for ourselves,” he said.

He set up a gym in his studio to allow his team to stay fit, but socially distanced from each other. He even, at one point, opened a free bar, to allow his workers to have a socially distanced pint. “It was all for team morale,” he said. “I looked around my team and knew we had team players who had initiative, tenacity and loyalty. I believed if I could bring that spirit of collaboration together, we could do anything.”

O’Grady and his team decided to turn their focus towards coming up with solutions for businesses trying to stay open during Covid-19. To do this it used its own design and innovation abilities as well as tapping into its ability to work with other Irish firms, and source the best quality products overseas. Among the things, Vision Creative did was research and design UVC Lightboxes to kill any pathogen bacteria or virus.

“Ryanair, Aer Lingus, British Airways, Jet Blue and SAS purchased the boxes to place equipment and clothing for their staff and ground crews clothing, laptops and high traffic touchpoint items to sterilise the surfaces,” O’Grady explained.

For years, Vision had been using antimicrobial surfaces for specific jobs, but now it realised the same technology could be used elsewhere. “Aer Lingus, Indeed, the Luas and other tech companies have used the easily applied clear surface film to make all surfaces a safer place and give people peace of mind when touching handles, desk and other surfaces,” he said.

Vision Creative had a fabrics division that usually made items for office interiors but now it started making visors, masks and snoods – and sold these products to frontline workers, builders and other clients. It also teamed up with a German company called Mexacare to bring in rapid antigen testing devices into Ireland, which were essential for construction sites and hospitality venues seeking to reopen – and stay open. O’Grady – with his love of his languages – was one of the founders of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Ireland, and through this connection, he started to investigate what Italy was doing to tackle Covid-19.

This led to him finding a maker of UVC air purification systems and importing them into Ireland. “Italy was on the front-line of the pandemic prior to Ireland,” he said. “We engaged with our supply chain partners there and found an air purification system that makes workplaces much safer – and with the science, tech and lab reports to prove efficacy.”

Gradually, Creative Studio’s revenues which had been in freefall began to pick up again, as it turned its skills towards providing solutions to fighting the pandemic. It had been a close thing, but it was back on its feet.

The return of some normality

“People need to meet in order to collaborate.”

As the world adjusted to the presence of Covid-19, Vision Creative also saw some of its old business return. LinkedIn asked it to work on its new headquarters in Paris. It had a team based in Italy, who could source the best product on the ground, as well as fly to where they were needed. It won work here too, but like others in the construction sector, it was frustrated when after Christmas the state decided to keep vast chunks of work deemed non-essential closed.

“We were the only country in the world to shut most of the construction sector,” O’Grady said. “The numbers didn’t support that logic. I felt the government slipped up there. It was very frustrating.”

The state however did, he says, get a lot right too by providing financial support to businesses like his own. In the residential fit out part of Creative’s business, O’Grady said he believed the move to buying online would not stop people wanting to visit showrooms. “People need to touch and feel if they’re going to spend from €5,000 to €55,000 on a kitchen,” he said. “They’re not going to buy it all online.”

He said his company had kitted out a 30-foot truck that could be used as a mobile display unit for kitchens. “The idea is to take the show on the road,” he said. He said companies were also taking this time to invest in their offices or refit them to prepare for workers returning.

O’Grady thinks predictions of the death of the office are premature. “It is definitely coming back,” he said. “People need to meet in order to collaborate. It will be different for different companies, but we can see the market definitely coming back.”

*****

Our interview is winding down. Aaron O’Grady is reflecting on how tough the last 18 months have been. He started to cycle to work to stay fit and keep his mind focused. He is a bit tired, but also very determined. “We have thrown everything at it,” he said. “And we have survived, and we are now doing ok. There were some dark days, but we came back. You see the metal of people when there is a crisis. I think I have the best team of my career, and the challenge now is to keep winning the work to keep them all going. But we can do that if we pull together.”