Big Red Barn
When Mayo man Donal Byrne got a job as events manager for the London Olympics in 2012 it gave him an idea for a business.
“We had a lot of marquees and they used to break my heart because they were always blowing away like kites because they were made of flimsy canvas,” he says.
When the games were over he used his redundancy money to design a steel framed, timber clad, modular alternative – a Big Red Barn.
He turned to Local Enterprise Office Mayo to help him develop a business. It advised him to enter the Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur programme.
Winning at county level secured him €20,000, which he used to develop another product, a portable wedding venue called The Little White Chapel.
In 2015 he stopped outsourcing their manufacturing and began making the products himself. The following year he moved to a 5,000 sq ft manufacturing warehouse.
In 2017 he bought a 15,000 sq ft factory on three acres just outside Swinford and, a year later, doubled its size.
See his full story here