I know that with one thing and another I have not written about this for a while I left off in Spain. Where I got married (long story I'll leave that for the biography)I arrived back in London to my sister with my new husband. Thinking we were going to stay in London but dear old Northern Ireland was calling us back. I received in the post information about an international designers programme, linking Irish designers with Irish company's to help them produce new products for the Irish gift wear market. It was run by N.I.S.B.I the Northern Ireland small business institute now defunct and run by Michele Rusk. Michele had completed a degree in Fashion and after a while went back to do an Masters of Business administration and started off the women in Business programme at NISBI.
Michele knew that there were lots of talented young people in Ireland bit they were not necessarily getting the opportunities to link with industry here. I was excepted on the programme and was linked with Glentara knitwear on the Done gal Road we went through intensive business training in Ireland and Pace university in new York. With one research visit to New York and Los Angeles to look at the gift wear market. I identified the knitted throw as the product I was to produce and quietly worked away on a range to see if I could get a distributor. The importance of that designers programme can not be under estimated. It helped me look at business in a professional way and helped link all the different strands of market development.
During this time I was staying at home with my mum and travelling up on the bus staying with one of the other girls on the programme during the week. I used to walk up the donegal road until the tit for tat killings were going on. At which point I stopped and got the bus. I remember one day going into work and one of the people who worked there had been shot at coming to work.Not good. It kinda made me wonder what on earth is the point of designing highly evolved and designed products for the US market when people were getting shot trying to make them.
Something else the programme helped me with was getting used to staying in hotels, I remember a beautiful one at the side of central park in new York in particular. basic rates as we were linked to Pace University. Events in the Fitzwilliam hotel New York and the Irish Trade board. Anyway I produced the throw range we had a launch in the design building (now defunct) near where the Golden Thread now is. I went back out to NY and got a distributor and the company kept me on part time to develop the business. Around this time like many artists people I was getting "why don't you become an art teacher" well I worked part time in Down Academy with 1st and second years, weird to be the one teaching and not being taught but it got me over a fear of standing in front of youngsters.But it didn't make me want to do it full time. I did it for a year part time and knew it was not for me.
The marriage didn't survive the designers programme but I did and at the end of the experience I was far more clued in business wise and much more focused about what I wanted to achieve. Still poor but what the heck, money don't make you happy;-)you just gotta add on those life experiences.
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