IN AN ALREADY saturated market, two former Monaghan footballers are using their understanding of the game to build a hugely successful Gaelic performance and fitness business.
Dermot McArdle and JP Mone, both of whom enjoyed inter-county careers, know the game inside out and their expertise on the pitch has transferred to off it.
Gaelic Performance Limited was established a little over two years ago and now provides gloves to some of the country’s top players while supplying equipment to hundreds of clubs.
Their leading product, latex gloves, have been a huge success and its popularity has seen the brand grow and mature into a market leader.
But McArdle and Mone have branched out further and recently added another section to their thriving business.
After five months of deliberations over various prototypes and designs, the pair brought their RamFit foam roller to the market in the hope of tapping into the hugely lucrative fitness and health industry.
On the face of it, it’s a risky move given the level of competition but McArdle is confident in the product he is offering.
“There are so many foam rollers out there but our way is different because of the design,” he tells The42. “A foam roller is normally a pretty straight forward product and can be bought cheaply enough.
“What we’ve come up with is a product which combines a number of different products – a foam roller and it also acts as a weight. They come in six, seven, eight and a half and 10 kilos.
“Our target audience is very much clubs and teams where they can use the RamFit as a foam roller but also as a piece of equipment for training.”
After purchasing a printing press for the manufacturing of their customisable gloves, McArdle and Mone decided to keep the business in-house and they produce the foam rollers from their own factory in Monaghan.
Furthermore, the product is made from 100% recycled materials
“The idea came to us about 18 months ago,” McArdle, a former corner-back, continued. “We were going to go down the road of developing power bags for GAA but we just happened to have a meeting with a guy who recycled rubber.
“That got us thinking – how can we use this? So we made a few different products and eventually settled on the design we have at the minute. He was originally looking for us to sell gym mats on our website but we knew what we wanted.
“A local guy here had a background in engineering and he took on the project to make the machine to make the products. That’s where we’re at now; we make our own products, we were going to outsource them but because we couldn’t get anyone in Ireland to make them we had to make them ourselves.
“We’ve moved about 400 units at this stage which is really, really good and we’re really positive about that. The biggest challenge for us is getting the price right and down to where the market feels it should be and unfortunately it’s a high-end foam roller which is retailing at €50, €60.”
With each product being manufactured individually, the process is quite slow and labour intensive. Although stores such as Lifestyle Sports are currently stocking their gloves, the quest to get the foam rollers onto the shelves as so far proved unsuccessful.
With just two other members of staff, resources and manpower is limited and as the company grows the demand will increase.
“At the moment all of our sales are direct sales. So we contact the customers directly and let them try the product and the feedback has been great. The idea behind that is to get people using the product and then passing the feedback on to friends and family.
“We don’t have the resources to market just yet but we didn’t have anything behind the gloves and they flew off the shelves so we have done it all before and that makes us fairly confident.”
As two former players, McArdle and Mone have a wide contact base within the GAA fraternity and they used that to get their business of the ground originally – and now they’re hoping the same will happen with their next venture.
“We’ve sold around 150 individual units to our customer list from the gloves, so former county players and former team-mates. That really helps because it’s free advertising but we do need to reassess our strategy.
“We knew how to work the gloves but it’s a different market and when you move up to the €50, 60, 70 mark it’s beyond the point where someone will take a risk on a product.
“We’ve plans to address that separating the two businesses has been the first step. We already have a good brand which has taken a lot of hard work to build-up and it’s now about using that to our advantage and not damaging it in anyway.”
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