Pivoting for Brexit: Clones designer turns her focus local

• Date: 19 December 2020
• Published date: 19 December 2020
• Author: Alanna Gallagher

"The plan was to establish good local suppliers within Ireland that are reliable and won't let you down, customs or no customs," she says. "If there's a problem you can send it back."

Covid-19 heightened our awareness of the economic impact of shopping from overseas stores. Currently 70 per cent of the online spend in Ireland goes to overseas based retailers, according to Retail Excellence Ireland. And while searches for shopping local and buying Irish gifts are up more than 500 per cent and 200 per cent respectively, according to Google, this data doesn't cover bigger ticket buys like building materials, furnishings and furniture.

Tonya grew up in Clones, Co Monaghan in the shadow of the Northern Ireland Border, where the town of Magheraveely in Co Fermanagh in the North is about equidistant.

This is Tonya's third year working as an interior designer. Before that she had spent about 15 years in the UK and was a young mother working with Quinn Insurance when she decided she wanted to switch career. Before making the leap she first shadowed a friend, Sean Costello of Oppidan Interiors in Manchester, to make sure it was the right decision for her. She quickly realised it was and her broker-cum-manager background has given her a good grounding in time management and working multiple jobs at ones.

Having trained at the JAADA Academy in London she picked up the early jobs for her company, The Little Design House, refurbishing homes for Irish friends returning to live in Ireland.

Now the concentration is on newer build projects such as this Co Monaghan home, pictured. It's home to Belgian-born, Inge Nysten and Declan Ronaghan. She first met Inge who works for a waste management company in Netherlands and runs two Leonidas chocolate shops, in Naas and Maynooth, after their planning permission for a design by a Belgian architect had been rejected by the local county council . Inge wasn't so keen on the revised design. "My objective was to make her fall in love with a design she didn't like," she says.

"It was about simply guiding the couple through the process, step by step. In a new build people can get overwhelmed. You have to have time to give thought to certain elements and to process those thoughts. For example when to start looking at bathroom fixtures."

Tonya recommends allocating budget to the various jobs as early as possible and then setting up a spreadsheet of costs. It makes the spending real and shows where it's going. For example if you decide you...