While completing a food science degree at University College Cork in the 1990s, Evelyn Moynihan picked up her first part-time job, working on the shop floor at Blarney Woollen Mills, a luxury retailer owned by the Kelleher family. As Moynihan flogged Waterford Crystal glasses and vases, she had no idea that 25 years later she would be heading up Kilkenny Group, the retail company spun out of Blarney in 1999.
“I’ve come full circle,” she says, six months after taking over as chief executive from Marian O’Gorman (née Kelleher), the company’s owner.
On an October morning the Nassau Street shop, one of 17 Kilkenny Design stores, is busy below, the walls lined with colourful Irish prints and the floor stocked with a wide range of
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