Weathering the storm takes total commitment

Thinking of starting up a business? Kells businessman and one-time Fianna Fail town councillor Peter Caffrey has a piece of advice. Don't do it unless, he adds with meaning, you are willing to put 110 per cent effort into it, to give it everything you've got, are prepared to absorb the hits, bounce back and go the full distance - and then some. Caffrey should know. Twenty years ago, in the midst of the last great downturn to hit this country, he decided to take the plunge. He set sail on a new business adventure using some of the money he had received from a redundancy pay-out to get a foothold in the world of commerce. At times, it has been a roller-coaster ride, good times followed by the bad, the highs mingled with the lows. Caffrey had worked in Zenith Data Systems in Kells, where the DeRoyal factory is now located. As the recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s took a vice-like hold, he was among a contingent of workers who found themselves among the downturn's victims. Married with a couple of young children, he was left to look at his options. Doomsayers would have warned him to be cautious, not to risk anything in an environment that was inherently hostile, where one significant slip could mean the loss of everything. Unwilling to become - in the words of British '80s band UB40 "another statistic on a government chart" - Caffrey was determined to create something for himself. He ignored the pessimists and armed with little else than a desire to generate an income and a willingness to work hard, he went for it and became involved in forming a new company. It helped that, at the time, his wife Maeve worked and that he had his redundancy money for start-up capital. Nevertheless, it took some time for the income to roll in. "I had worked in the bar trade before I got a job with Zenith. I knew a little bit about that type of business. The opportunity arose to get involved in the drinks distribution business and I went in with a couple of partners into a business, and we formed Royal County Bottling," he recalled last week. "The other partners had their own business interests and they decided to concentrate on those and they left the business shortly after that and I reformed as Kells Beverages Ltd." Over the past two decades, Kells Beverages has supplied soft drinks and beer to outlets within about a 30-mile radius of Kells, his customer base a myriad of small shops and pubs; the type of enterprises, he asserts, that form the "backbone" of any town or community. Kells Beverages Ltd originally supplied work for two people. That increased to eight during the halcyon days of the Celtic Tiger before the change in economic circumstance forced a reduction to the current figure of five. And that adaptation to changing times has formed a central part of Caffrey's recent business moves. If there is one lesson he has learned in his 20-year career in business, it is that while risk is part and parcel of everyday life in the commercial world, the entrepreneurial instinct to expand and grow must be tempered by prudence and logic. Over the past two or three years, he has sought to compensate for the inevitable customers who have fallen by the wayside by broadening the range of services his enterprise offers. "We tend to deal with small, family-owned businesses, small shops, small pubs, that's our base but obviously with an eye to things slowing down we had to expand our business in order to keep the level of turnover and staff. We do a lot more confectionary now such as chocolate bars and crisps. It is another aspect of our business but it also complements what we were doing." Catering and vending are other aspects of the business that offer expansion, he adds. If there was one commercial law that Caffrey strictly adhered to from the start, it was that the customer got exactly what the customer ordered - and on time. It is an approach, he says, that has served him well. To survive, even in the good times, a businessperson must be as good as his or her word. There is no room for negotiation or wavering on that issue. Then there is commitment required. Caffrey says that he is on call 24 hours a day. He has received calls at all hours of the night from hostelries who are besieged by an unexpected army of revellers. Emergency stocks are required and he must be prepared to fill the void. He accepts it is simply part of running a business. Last summer, Caffrey stepped down from the local political circuit after serving 15 years as a Kells town councillor. For most of that time, he had enjoyed the cut and thrust of political debate. He was, he says, all too willing to back progressive ideas that supported the town - no matter what political source it came from. Meetings were often lively, productive - and long drawn-out. They could go on for hours and it didn't always suit someone who was also in the throes of guiding a business through choppy, recessionary waters. He decided to focus on the business but there are times he does miss it all, the banter and the opportunity to do something for the community. Peter Caffrey's father, John, had been involved in local government for 27 years. A big Fianna Fail man, there was only going to be one party for his son to join when the time came to nail his colours to the mast. The fact that his family was well-known locally did him little harm when it came to generating business. He was thankful that people who owed their political allegiance to other parties didn't hold any grudges either when it came to clinching a deal. Business is business, after all. Little has changed in that respect over the past two decades. "Over the years, I've enjoyed the support of many businesspeople who came from a different political persuasion, we could always have the chat when I went in, we could always do business without allowing politics to get in the way," he adds. Caffrey joined Fianna Fail when he was just a youngster and was very active in the party long before he put his name before the local electorate. He still holds that Fianna Fail had the best policies for the country over the past 20 years and that it wasn't all about a reckless splurge to fuel the boom. "People say to me where did all the money go but, if you drive to the new M3 motorway, if you drive from Kells to Galway or Cork, you see on the motorway in front of you where a lot of the money went. Even in Kells, we got €6 million for housing development refurbishment and a lot of money came into Kells that went towards schools and swimming pool upgrades. I'm not saying other parties didn't play their part, they did." Nama, he feels, was necessary and it went a long way to helping the smaller enterprises survive. There are indications banks are once more starting to support small firms, once a well-researched business plan is submitted. That was how it was back in the late 1980s and early '90s. Back then, hard work and sacrifice also equalled success. The more things change, the more they stay the same.