News & Products
Screwfix set to open a further 12 stores in Ireland this year By late 2021, Screwfix is set to have a total of 29 stores open in Ireland. Despite the challenges that Covid-19 has had on the retail and construction industries, the multichannel retailer is continuing to open stores in the Irish market with an additional 12 stores later this year. To date, Screwfix has 18 stores open in the Republic of Ireland and with the addition of these stores later this year, the company’s employment rate will grow by more than 30%, with over 140 additional staff working across retail management, service assistants and supervisor roles.
Recent store openings in Carlow, Athlone, Portlaoise, Dublin (Kylemore Road) and Letterkenny, add to the retailer’s fastpaced expansion in Ireland. Since opening stores in 2019, Screwfix say they have more than 300,000 active customers in Ireland who are shopping for key products across a variety of categories including Bathrooms, Power Tools and Safety & Workwear. Screwfix stores stock over 10,000 products, from power tools and workwear to heating and electrical appliances with 24,000 products available to order online for delivery and collection from the store.
Housebuild.ie - a marketplace for home-builds Housebuild.ie is the first ever all-in-one marketplace for homebuilds, renovations and improvements in the Irish market, giving home-owners direct access to construction professionals, products and services in one digital hub. Since its soft launch in February, Housebuild.ie has signed up over 2,000 professionals nationwide, ranging from bricklayers, plumbers and carpenters, to surveyors, engineers and architects. The founders of Housebuild.ie are Eoghain and Ailish Ryan. Both engineers, the siblings run Ryan and Associates, an engineering consultancy in Salthill, Galway, specialising in fire safety. Eoghain Ryan is a former Assistant Chief Fire Officer with both Cork County Council and Westmeath County Council. This experience prompted him to develop a free mobile Building Regulations app in 2015, offering a searchable and easy-to-use tool professionals can use on site in both Ireland and the UK. The Building Regulations app will now be rolled into the Building Regulations, Planning and Guidelines section of Housebuild.ie, adding further value for professionals using the site and will act as a regulatory aggregator for construction professionals. More than 20,000 unique users have logged on to Housebuild.ie so far to search for tradespeople in their area. Housebuild.ie has a dedicated Construction Hub with practical guides and easy-tofollow ‘how to’ videos on everything from building regulations, planning and costings to energy efficiency, Passive House and nZEB projects. Homeowners can also buy from product partners such as EZ Living Furniture and Tile Merchant and browse the ‘inspiration’ section for home decor and interior design ideas. 16
Housebuild.ie has been developed over four-and-a-half years at a cost of about ¤950,000, including financial investment of ¤450,000 and hundreds of man-hours spanning engineering, software and business development. The tech stack has been developed in conjunction from James Whelton, the Corkborn Founder of CoderDojo, and Joe Smyth, Co-Founder of Altocloud, the successful Galway SaaS company specialising in Customer Analytics. Whelton and Smyth have joined the Board of Directors at Housebuild.ie, which is headquartered in Salthill and employs 15 people. Kevin McDonagh, an engineer with a successful 20-year career in the life sciences sector, has also joined as MD. The plan is to expand into the UK later this year with the launch of Housebuild.co.uk. From there, the company hope to have the Housebuild platform live in the US by 2024.”
Photo courtesy of Andrew Downes. September/October 2021
