Guaranteed Irish member Irish Woodstyle provides bespoke design and supply of garden rooms, home offices, starter homes and storage solutions.
Eddie Hamilton Managing Director at Irish Woodstyle talks maintaining their supply chain, an increased interest in garden rooms and how Irish Woodstyle has benefited from Guaranteed Irish membership.
Can you tell us a bit about your business Irish Woodstyle?
Irish Woodstyle was formed in 2000, twenty years ago now by Edward and Geraldine Hamilton with the intention of supplying the Irish market with good design quality garden cabins. We manufacture all our products here in Ardcath to order and are fully bespoke in what we supply. We provide a full turnkey service from design to handover and operate throughout all of Ireland. We have six employees and a further six as needs arise.
What are the challenges that you face in your business and how do you work to overcome them particularly in the current climate?
Our main challenge now is keeping up with demand and keeping a constant supply of raw materials flowing. We were manufacturing to the just in time model, but are slowly moving to a 90 day lead in time. We feel this will smooth out the current shortages of materials we are experiencing and will avoid closing day delays.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity for Irish Woodstyle over the next five years?
We see a great opportunity to supply garden rooms for use as home offices, gyms, hobby rooms, dens and back garden businesses such as hairdressers. The next five years we expect to see a lot more garden home office setups and will focus on developing a user friendly interface to simplify ordering good value for money quality products. We will promote Irish Woodstyle as the go to people for maker to model in the simplest way possible.
What made you decide to become a member of Guaranteed Irish?
We wanted to become Guaranteed Irish to promote our brand as truly Irish made for the Irish climate and with the recognised quality of this brand Guaranteed Irish, we felt it would be a great seal of approval for what we do.
Have you seen an increase in demand/interest for garden rooms since Covid-19?
The short answer is yes, but this doesn’t tell the story we see developing. We have seen a massive increase in interest in garden rooms. As you might expect, the uses are varied with the most common one being a hobby room or children’s den. However there are many other trends developing, for use as an office is a predictable one, hairdressers, beautician studios, yoga and music studios and gyms.
What can we expect for Irish Woodstyle in the future and do you have plans to expand to other product offerings?
We will be developing off the shelf garden room designs to go along with our current offerings. We are also developing a mobile, one bedroom tiny home trailer and expect to have it complete by mid autumn.
Has being a member of Guaranteed Irish helped during Covid-19?
Being a member of Guaranteed Irish will be more beneficial over the coming months and years as I believe we all will move towards locally produced goods and services and only then will the true value of being a Guaranteed Irish member be truly appreciated, we are all in this together and as your tag line says, #AllTogetherBetter.
