Business Showcase: A Year in Review (Pt1)

2014 saw the start of our Business Showcase feature. It gave local businesses and Start Ups the chance to showcase their products and services to our ever expanding audience and there has been several great success stories since some of these companies have been featured.

Each Wednesday a new company was featured and since February, over 40 companies have been featured to date. Starting in 2015, we will be expanding our Business Showcase feature further with companies being featured on both Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Over the next few days we’re going to take a look back at all the great companies who have been featured this year.

Things got underway when our good friend Samantha Kelly was featured:

1: Business Showcase: A chat with Tweetinggoddess and #IrishBizParty founder Samantha Kelly

Also known as the Tweeting Goddess ,Samantha runs Twitter workshops and helps companies establish their social media presence. Based in Rosslare, Samantha is also the person behind the hugely successful  #irishbizparty which is a weekly Twitter based online meet up for small businesses.

Samantha has appeared on RTE One’s She’s the Business and Dragons Den and is also the winner of a #Tweetieinspire award.

2: Business Showcase: How to avoid expensive data roaming charges with TravelWifi.ie

Travel Wifi are an Irish company setup with the aim of removing expensive data roaming charges for people travelling abroad. Setup in 2013, Travel Wifi currently employ three people and offer their services in countries across Europe and in the U.S.

We had a chat with Andrea Slabutu to find out more about the company and how they can save us money!

3: Business Showcase: Bua Ireland Business Solutions

Bua Ireland Business Solutions is an Irish Information Technology company founded in January 2013 by two brothers, JP and Brian Kehoe. With clients in Ireland and America, their focus is on Information Security.

They help clients with all aspects of technology based security, analysing companies’ security procedures, providing solutions and giving them peace of mind.

We had a chat with Brian Kehoe to find out some more about the company.

4: Business Showcase: Platinum Promotions

Setup towards the end of 2013, Platinum Promotions are a new event management company who have already completed 40 events to date. Taking an innovative approach to management, the team are already building a returning client base which includes companies such as Tommy Hilfiger and Irish Distillers.

We caught up with Platinum Promotions’ director, Robert Gibbons, to find out how things were going

5: Business Showcase: Avalanche Designs

Founded in 2012 by Aidan O’ Carroll, Avalanche is a website development firm which aims to fill a gap in the market by producing high quality websites for small and medium enterprises within Ireland.

Beginning as a one man operation, the company now has five employees, all who are dedicated to turning Avalanche into the biggest design firm in the country.

We spoke with Aidan to find out more about this young, vibrant company.

6: Business Showcase: Quotefish.com

Launched to the public in September 2013, Quotefish has spent 4 years perfecting the best way to digitally connect people with local businesses, saving them time and money and are committed to sharing connections between local businesses and local customers globally.

The aim of their website is to allow anyone to easily obtain quotes from and give work to reliable local businesses on one platform, resulting in happier customers and better business, whatever their locality.

We caught up with the company’s founder, Simon Chapman, to find out more about this new service.

7: Business Showcase: Service Assured Maintenance

Service Assured Maintenance is an Audio Visual company based in the Marina Commercial Park in Cork. Launched in November ’09 by Keith O’ Driscoll and Mark Hickey, the company has been expanding every year since and recently opened an Audio & Visual supply shop at their premises.

We spoke with Keith to find out some more about his company.

8: Business Showcase: Brave Media Digital Marketing Agency

Brave Media are a Digital Marketing Agency set up in late 2012 who deal in generating traffic, Search Engine Optimisation, and getting their clients found online. Their services also include Content Creation, Social Media Management, and PPC. They’re also big into keyword and competitor research in the planning stages of strategising.

We caught up with Lisa Sills from Brave Media to find out more about the company.

9: Business Showcase: Blanco Niño

Blanco Niño is building Europe’s first real corn tortilla factory in Ireland. They plan to have over 600 acres of farmland growing high quality non GMO corn maize for their products giving a much needed boost to the Irish farming sector, in addition to creating 30 jobs at their production facility in Fingal in north county Dublin.

The Blanco Niño project is the brainchild of Dublin born Philip Martin and we caught up with him to find out how things are going.

10: Business Showcase: Findersfee

Findersfee is a new company setup by Steve Slyman and Neil Coogan with the aim of finding any product at the best possible price for people. Launched in January, the company has already completed over 300 searches for customers, returning some great savings.
We had a chat with Neil to find out more about the company.

11: Business Showcase: Glitz n’ Pieces

Glitz N’ Pieces was launched in 2013 by two friends and business partners Ellen Weber and Grace O’ Sullivan who are passionate about fashion. Displaying entrepreneurial skills beyond their years, creating and running a business is evidently another passion that the girls share.
Chatting to Grace, we found out more about the company and how things have been going.

12: Business Showcase: Simpl Performance

Simpl Performance is an international performance based marketing company. Headquartered in Dublin, with a satellite office in Amsterdam, Simpl Performance delivers a managed affiliate marketing solution to large and small Irish clients, including O2 Ireland, Carlton Hotels, MySurvey.ie and GrabOne.

We had a chat with Gareth Lynch from Simpl Performance to find out more about the company.

13: Business Showcase: Secret Fashion Fixes

Secret Fashion Fixes is a company that was set up by Dee Fitzgerald in 2012 with the aim of offering people easy access to a range of products which up to that point had been unavailable in the Irish market.
Based in County Clare, Dee runs the fashion dilemma solving company with her husband Tom. We caught up with Dee to find out how things are going.

14: Business Showcase: Viddyad

Viddyad are an Irish company which lets any business create their own video Ad online in minutes. Aiming to reduce the cost and simplify the process, the Viddyad technology platform automates professional video Ad creation with built in distribution and publishing. Users simply choose the content, add their text and logo and the Ad is created live in seconds.
Hot on the heels of winning another award, we spoke with Viddyad CEO Grainne Barron to find out more about this pioneering company.

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Watch out for part two of our Business Showcase year in review tomorrow, when we’ll take a look back at some of the other great companies who have featured so far.