Business in Ennis

mickmcl09

Grew up in Ennis, spent much of my child and teenage years in Nenagh.
I now live in South Kilkenny.
A little background first.
Ennis is a great town, considering it's location between Galway and Limerick. Cities in such close proximity would normally cannibalise business in such a town as Ennis given its location. Shannon obviously alters that significantly ie not many jobs in Ennis for it's size, but unemployment rates would be significantly lower than the average. Also from a demographic point of view, a lower proportion of the population of Ennis and the environs got sucked into the boom.

So what business could you bring to Ennis given that you still see people walk the streets with some purchase or other? (next time you go to Limerick or Waterford, see how there's alot less shoppers about and most of them are empty handed!)
The answer is none. Ennis has everything you need in a broad sense.

So why pose the question? Look at it differently. Kilkenny City would be far more similar to Ennis than, say Nenagh. It's thriving. All the businesses are proactive.
Most businesses have loyalty schemes or they form partnerships with other business - spend so much and they give you a voucher to spend in another unrelated business. The council seems to be very engaged with local businesses. One gets the impression that they enter into very proactive discussion with the local traders, be it rates, parking or whatever. On a side note there's hardly ever any roadworks there either. It's like they do things right the first time (saving vast sums of money) unlike say Waterford where roads are constantly being uprooted in the City.
The attitude in Kilkenny seems to be 'the more business they're doing next door, the better for me' - so they help each other with various offers etc. Parking is relatively cheap as well, free in some places with a minimum spend. McDonagh Junction is a great example, a smaller version of the Crecent inLimerick. Could anyone in Ennis imagine having a mini Crecent in Ennis and being good for business. Shoppers commute from Wexford, Waterford, Carlow, portlaoise and parts of Offaly and Tipp to the place, but they also go up the town and spend in the town centre.
Forgive for saying it, but many of the business owners suffer more from the 'green eyed monster' syndrome instead of helping each other drive their business. It's a cultural thing within the town businesses. It won't change unless a number of them come together, sing off the same hymn sheets and get more businesses within the town to buy into it.
Chamber of Commerce should be scrapped for a start, spend the money directly on local initiative instead of on wages and admin for these lip service organisations.

Sorry it's so long winded. Ennis doesn't need much in the line of new business right now. They need to mind what they have and then drive on from there.

buck65

A KFC would do well.

Shapey Fiend

I think buying local doesn't necessarily have to be a case of paying massively over the odds. The likes of Tesco will make money by scalping you in some regard at the end of the day. It mightn't be in the short term but they're not about helping the customer they're about the bottom line, even more so than local businesses. The way you get that big is by being more ruthless than the competition.

I think the solution most of the time is to buy quality and don't buy as much of it. It's a bit of a symptom of the modern world that people want to eat a steak (for example) every day. That means it has to be cheap. They'd be a lot smarter to eat it once a week instead and pay full whack to get a good one. There's great value (and by that I mean quality for the price, not simply price) out there at the moment if you're prepared to do a bit of legwork and check around all the independents.

I don't mean to be unnecessarily anti-chain shops but I'd hate to see in 20, 30 years time they're running everything. At the moment we've already got Aldi, Lidl, Dunnes and Tesco. We really don't need some sort of megastore. Let them revamp the Tesco at the old location if they like. It's big enough for a town of this size. No need to let them have televisions, garden furniture, plants and a hundred other things cos that definitely cuts into local business. The whole concept of getting everything under one roof annoys me. It's just trying to keep customers from going anywhere else.

dr.fuzzenstein

MrsD007 wrote: »

Very true, I can safely say that Undertaking is one profession I couldn't work in, it is would be so morbid and depressing.

Where else do you get less hassle from your customers?
I think it might be alright, it's the live bastards that worry me most of the time.

Lady Chatterton

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Where else do you get less hassle from your customers?
I think it might be alright, it's the live bastards that worry me most of the time.

Definitely not a job for me Dr. Fuzzenstein

If I know my limitations, I'm way too sensitive to be an Undertaker, I'd end up doing more crying than the grieving family, I'd be a complete and utter disaster

REPSOC1916

Have to agree with an earlier comment about the lack of undertakers in Ennis.

There's a glut of restaurants in Ennis and very few of them are what you could call decent. Tbh the one's that are better will probably survive.

cynder

I too would love to see Argos in Ennis, along with next. The options to buy kids clothes in Ennis is limited and the ones that do are pricy.