Franchising Entrepreneur: ‘My Mistakes Made Me Millions’

Real Business:

Mick McAleese set up Sliderobes, selling made-to-fit home improvement furnishings, in Dublin in the midst of the recession in 1983. But battling through the tough times has helped the Irish entrepreneur slicken his business plan – and build a £15m business.

The dire economic climate proved something of a teething problem for the young company: ‘It was so bad that people were posting their keys back to the building societies because they couldn’t sell their houses. Home improvement products weren’t exactly sought after.’

But bad timing wasn’t the only flaw in the business’ foundations, says McAleese. ‘We began to realise we’d made some pretty serious mistakes in the way we started things. We got our locations all wrong, and we knew absolutely nothing about recruiting good managers.’

McAleese explains that they’d set up their first few outlets in areas where advertising in wide-reaching newspapers and magazines was very expensive, so they battled to get their message out. ‘There’s no point in running an outlet if you can’t speak to your customers.’

Realising that things weren’t looking good for Sliderobes, McAleese ‘came running back to Dublin with my tail between my legs’, then started reflecting on how to improve his business model and start growing the company.

‘We knew we had to rethink our system. So we asked ISO:9000 to monitor all our existing outlets – they really sharpened us up.’

That spell of intensive assessment got Sliderobes back on track.

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