Talk Better Business: Recent Episodes
Newry Chamber
Talk Better Business is a new podcast by Newry Chamber for and about, local business. In each episode we will have a look at the business news of the week, we will also be chatting to Tony McKeown, CEO of Newry Chamber about upcoming events.
In each episode host, Deborah Loughran will be joined by a special guest for a casual chat about what makes them better.
We hope you will leave with some nuggets of advice or information to take back into your own organisation or your personal life to help improve your business.
In this episode, Deborah chats to Clare Vallely, Director of Kukoon Rugs who runs the highly-successful family business based in Newry with her brother, Paul.
They have been on a remarkable journey from selling their first rug online in 2006 to selling over 650,000 rugs shipped worldwide in 2021.
They more than doubled their product range during the pandemic and increased the workforce from 30 people at the start of 2020 to almost 90 people today, with two bespoke showrooms in Newry and Belfast and a distribution centre in Liverpool.
Hear about how Clare and her brother Paul have grown the company and how their culture has evolved where the focus is on the business process.
In this chat, there are frequent references to LEAN principles, Radical Candor, 90 Day Rocks and Action Orientated Values. These are just a few examples of how Kukoon Rugs continues to grow its business.
In this episode, Donal O'Hanlon, Chair of Newpoint Players narrates the history of Newry Chamber from 1820 - 2020.
Newry has had a Chamber of Commerce from at least 1820, the date of the earliest record so far found.
It is possible that one existed before that date but there no historical record has yet been uncovered to confirm same.
The town was up until that period a strange and rare legal entity, an "Exempt Jurisdiction" with its origin in the establishment of a Medieval Cistercian monastery in the 12th Century.
It was unlike our 21st Century concept of a town or city administration, where a forum of elected officials or a body of respected citizens may hold sway.
It was for a great part of its existence controlled by the Cistercian Abbot of Newry and later, from the time of the Protestant Reformation, by his replacement, the Lay Abbot of Newry.
The history of those events is covered in Bradshaw's Guide to Newry 1819 which appears in replica form in this publication.
Donal takes us on a journey from when the earliest record of a Chamber of Commerce in Newry was found, up to the modern day and the organisation in its current form.
In this episode, Deborah talks to Tom Hughes, Lean Connoisseur & Author of the practical guide to building an extraordinary culture, entitles "Improvement starts with I".
In this week's episode, Deborah chats to Aaron Kernan, Managing Director of Kernan Property Services about the transition from working in to running the family business.
In this week's episode, Deborah chats to Julie Gibbons, President of Newry Chamber and Managing Director of AbbeyAutoline about how she is #BreakingTheBias as a female leader in the insurance industry.