Through university, I worked spare hours as a security guard at the Guinness St James’ Gate facility, often working the night shift or at weekends. After that, I worked in sales at a CD-ROM publishing company. That’s where I found a love for selling and realised I was good at it. I still remember my first cold call, coming back to the office with not one but two sales, loving the buzz of selling. I just wanted to get back out there.
From there, I moved to a technology distribution company in Dublin where I met John McHugh. We became close friends and both of us had a burning desire to set something up for ourselves. So, in July 2000, we set up TNS Distribution. We started out buying memory and other peripherals on our personal credit cards. We worked from a back bedroom in my house and we held stock in the attic. My brother Stephen joined us and in our first year of business, we hit an impressive €1 million in sales.
Over the next 12 years, TNS grew at an incredible rate, becoming the go-to distributor for any Apple-related products in Europe and Asia. We also represented some of the largest CE brands like Beats by Dre and GoPro. John and I also set up a successful own-brand company within the group, as well as a logistics company. In 2011, we sold TNS to PCH international and we stayed on for four years to grow TNS within the group.
In 2018, I took my love of sport and my skills in business to invest in Spatzwear, an extreme weather cycling apparel company based in Yorkshire. I work closely with Tom and the Spatz Team to grow the brand.
In 2020 I founded TAPiTAG with my longterm Colleagues John and Mark.
Our unique combination of NFC hardware powered by TAPiTAG cloud allows our clients to migrate their customer interactions seamlessly from analogue to digital. Our sustainable solution saves our customers money, provides a better user experience for their customers while providing great insight into their customers needs and habits thru our analytics and reporting.
Our customer base is global and includes many well know corporates, marketing companies, building contractors, estate agents, restaurants and public houses.
