The personal touch has seen a Tipperary business flourish despite multinational competition

When next door neighbours Thomas Hackett and Patricia (Pat) Mackey played as children in the streets of Baron Park in the 1950s  Clonmel, they didn’t imagine they’d ever be married with seven grandchildren.

Thomas was called after his great-grandfather, but is widely known as Sean.

Only a handful refer to him by his birth name. Those closest to him call him Junior.

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In the shadow of West Gate is an Aladdin’s Cave created by Sean and Pat.
There’s no magic carpet, the store is stacked with electrical goods mostly imported from the orient, but it wasn’t always so.

Hackett’s traces its origins to the last century. I enter the store and find silver-haired Sean Hackett and his daughter Aoife busy inside. Pat is occupied at home looking after the grandchildren.

Can they explain how the family has flourished against the competition of multinational corporations?
“Let’s drive to my house”, says Sean. “It’s too busy to talk in here.” In the warmth of their home overlooking the misty hills of Slievenamon we watch blue hydrangeas quiver as raindrops softly fall. Pat offers tea and fresh buttered scones. They have been together since their schooldays.

Sean says: “I went to St Mary’s School in Clonmel, and I couldn't wait to get out of the place.”
He didn’t do the Leaving Cert. Instead, at 15, he helped his father repairing punctures in a small shed beside their house in Baron Park.

Pat’s grandfather was a baker in Rockwell college. He wrote in the old Irish script and insisted his children spoke Irish.
“My father and grandfather never wanted to be bakers, but in those days, you took what you could.”

Pat opted for a secretarial course instead of the Leaving Cert.
She became a clerk in St Luke’s Hospital, Clonmel, and did the accounts for Sean’s father.
Sean and Pat took more notice of each other and started ‘going together’.
Everyone rode bicycles, and keeping them on the road required a lot of skill, so Sean took training courses in bicycle maintenance.

He and his father rented a small premises in Mary Street for 7/6d a week.

Later, they acquired the agency for Raleigh bikes and took a bank loan to buy a property in O’ Connell Street. “We never applied for grants or anything like that. In those days you worked, and you earned.”

“The manufacturers regulated prices, so there was no competition. People were afraid of losing their dealership if they tried to offer discount. Bikes came by train from Dublin to Clonmel wrapped in corrugated paper and were delivered to the shop in a CIE horse float.

There were a lot of horses, the streets were awash with dung each Fair Day, even on O’ Connell street.
We put wooden boards out to save the windows being broken by animals backing into them. There were few cars in town, people walked or rode bikes everywhere. Cycling wasn't restricted to the working man: the people in Knocklofty House bought bicycles from us.”

Turf was still commonly used for heating, but developments were afoot: in Clonmel, gas was extracted from coal in a big corporation furnace and kept in a storage tank in the Mall.

Sacks of coke, the side product, were delivered by lorry to the housing estates as fuel.
When gas became the modern way of living, Sean and Pat saw an opportunity to stay ahead of the posse by selling gas heaters and cookers. Many houses had a gas cooker, some had a gas heater.
When natural gas was piped in from overseas, Hackett’s won the agency to supply bottled gas. In time, as gas became environmentally unwelcome, they recognised that although electricity supply wasn't dependable, it was the way forward.

As things improved and the population had more money to spend, Hackett’s supplied, installed and repaired washing machines, electric cookers, refrigerators and dishwashers, until the arrival of computers heralded the arrival of factory-trained specialists trained to plug in a laptop to fix things.

“The built-in four plate traditional cooker was replaced by one with everything built in.
It talks to you and is self-cleaning at the press of a button.” said Sean.
There are few independent electrical retailers left. Online sales dictate the retail price these days, but it’s a bit of a nightmare.

Most of our takings used to be in cash and cheques, but now 90% of sales are with bank cards. Cash is an expensive way of doing business, it’s a thing of the past.

It takes half an hour to count five or six grand in cash before putting it in the bank. The bank machine counts it in 30 seconds, and they charge 50c per €100, and the money is automatically loaded into our bank at five past midnight.”
Robberies have evolved from the old-fashioned hold up to online theft. “We lost €27,000 when our bank account was hacked two years ago. We won't get that money back.”

The personal touch has gone out of so many things and the family’s success is largely due to their personal service.
“Our staff deliver and install to suit our customers. People come to us for two reasons: they want to know if the product is as good as it states on the internet and what happens if it breaks down. If you buy on the internet, who do you contact to have it repaired and what will it cost? The internet is good at selling, but repairs are uncertain. If you buy from us and it breaks, we deal with it.

I’d put our success down to the personal touch that we offer clients, and price. We're part of Expert, a group of 69 shops owned by individuals, but buying collectively.

I used to buy maybe 24 washing machines at a time, but with the group we buy 2000 at a much better price.”
At the age of eighty, Sean feels that the family is lucky to be reasonably comfortable and in good health. Their children have their own houses and talk to each other.

“We started off with nothing and we've been in business for 55 years. Most of my generation are dead, but the sons and daughters of our customers still come to us.”
Things are changing, as “Many of those in town now are from other countries. We employ two Polish installers, and they are good, they know what they’re doing.”

The business has grown from humble bicycle repairs to becoming a big store which is part of the lifeblood of Clonmel. Sean longingly reflects on how:

“Clonmel was once the biggest inland town in Ireland but has fallen to about 10thor 11th. O'Connell Street was known as the Golden Mile; the best shops were here, all the premises were occupied. Now, you’ll see 18 vacant retail premises.
It's pure frustration if you want to buy a newspaper or a pint of milk. There's only one pub, there were four or five; that will tell you the way retail has gone.”

Sean and Pat have been part of Clonmel’s changes. They have four children; the oldest, Michael, is a psychotherapist in Dublin; Mark went to the States to work for Analogue Devices and is there ever since; Brian worked in Hackett’s for three decades and witnessed many changes over the years.

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His eldest son, Callum, also works in the business and became a daddy himself recently.
The youngest, Aoife, fondly remembers when she was six years old: “Gaga Sean was a bicycle mechanic and worked in a shed at the back of the house.

When my bike had a puncture, he sat on the kitchen floor and fixed the tyre.”
The Clonmel-rooted family company has come a long way. Aoife is now the Managing Director, and her husband, Paul, is also involved. Their sons Cillian and Daragh maintain their great grandfather’s tradition of learning in Irish.
“Cillian is into football, hurling, soccer, and mountain bikes. He enjoys engineering and carpentry, and is learning how to integrate appliances.

Daragh is the family tech guru. He’s a gamer, a geek who loves to swim in Hotel Minella,” says Aoife.
Aoife carries the Hackett flame forward. Her current interest is in modernising the shop and bringing Clonmel back to where she feels it should be.

She is on the committee of Clonmel Business Improvement District (BID) which aims to return Clonmel to its former status by channelling the Hackett family energy forward, beyond bicycle repair and the sale of gas and electric appliances, into the challenges of solar, wind and as yet undiscovered energy sources that will power us beyond the 22nd century.