Talented locals ready to set out their stalls at Craft, Food and Gift Fair

Taking part in an organised craft fair makes perfect sense for small businesses, especially if they are local start-ups, like some of those who will be showing off their wares this weekend in Galway City.

The third annual Galway Craft, Food and Gift Fair takes place this Saturday and Sunday in the Black Box on the Headford Road, where over 40 exhibitors will set out their stalls.

Organised by the Galway Enterprise Board, up to 6,000 people attended the two day event last year such is the interest in craft or cottage industries, especially if they involve organic materials or home grown or home produced food!

One of this year’s first timers at the Fair will be Sineád O’Brien, a law graduate student who has shelved her law aspirations for now to concentrate on a seaweed business.

Mungo Murphys Seaweed Co is based in the Conamara Gaeltacht, in Ros a Mhil, which has a history of fish and seaweed products.

Sineád’s products involve bath and beauty but she also supplies fresh seaweed to restaurants — the nori is quite popular with the growing popularity of sushi in local eateries.

She also hopes to further develop the beauty end of it and is currently working with the Limerick Institute of Technology on that aspect.

“I was in Amsterdam working on a Masters and saw a lot of my college colleagues setting up their own businesses, but it was when I met someone who imported seaweed from Galway that I got thinking maybe I should go into that myself.

“Though my mother is involved in the seaweed business, I hadn’t appreciated how it is valued until I went abroad,” she admits.

Her company was set up a year ago so this weekend she hopes to introduce her products to a whole new set of customers. Her products are currently sold online. . . and yes Mungo is a fictitious character!!

Another first-timer is Tony O’Reilly of Beleaf, also set up just a year ago quite by accident.

He was involved in a company which makes stairs but when the construction business quietened down, he agreed to help make a few wooden products for a friend who opened up a pop-up shop last Christmas. The chopping boards, jewellery holders and tea light holders were all sold out and he decided there was more demand on hand-crafted products than stairs.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.