A locally-owned, family-run interior deco store has opened in the Mullingar Shopping Centre, beside Tesco Superstore on the Ashe Road.
With Irish produced beds, living room and dining room suites, and bespoke occasional items, A Gorman’s Furniture and Interiors is a new direction for the owners of A Gorman’s Flooring and Furniture, who have been on Austin Friar Street since 2016.
Open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 6pm, owners Anthony and Sharon Gorman are passionate about providing the right service to the right person, emphasising that they do not sell to people, rather people buy from them.
“Everybody’s different, everybody’s tastes are different so we deliberately don’t pigeonhole the person or tell them what they need,” Anthony told Topic. “People are far more comfortable knowing they can come in without being pressurised into buying anything. They get a complete breakdown on their price, knowing exactly what everything costs and how long it will take so they can make an informed choice.”
Sourcing quality items for the store is of utmost importance to the family.
“This is very much a local story,” Anthony explained. “We buy from Briody’s and Respa – local firms that employ local people. Our quality is high, we only sell the very best in the market. Their people are employed locally in Ireland, manufacturing from beginning to end, and it all adds up. We have limited edition pieces from the National Archives in the UK printed on license too, there are only a certain amount of them printed every year and it rotates. Everything in the store is thought out and special.”
Daughter by design
Joining Anthony in the shop is his youngest daughter Áine (19) who has discovered a real flair for design.
“School never really suited me and I tried college but that didn’t work out for me. I felt so lost with no idea what I was going to do so this year I went into dad’s business full-time where I had worked most of my summers,” she told Topic.
“Since being in the store, I’ve learned that I really, really enjoy the job. I love customer service, talking to people and all the stuff that involves, even the maths, and I hated maths growing up.”
Áine’s newfound passion for design and people set her on a new path.
“I found I particularly liked the design aspect. People would come in looking for advice and I really enjoyed helping them. I researched it to see if that was something I would like and it turns out it very much was, so now I’m studying interior design in the Irish academy of Art and Design at UCD. Mam and Dad are so encouraging to us all – Róisín is an Assistant Psychologist and Aoife is in fifth year studying medicine. Whatever we want to do, they support us completely.”
Born and Bred in Mullingar
The store opened with a soft launch last Wednesday, August 28, and more product is arriving every day with signage and decor still being installed. It’s a pinch-me moment for Anthony who grew up as one of 13 siblings on Green Street, barely 100 metres away from the new shop.
“When I was a child, this was a building site we used to play on. I remember it being Gubay’s then Tesco and now we have a shop here. I am the second youngest of 13 children and both of my parents, Rosaleen and Christy Gorman, were nurses in St Loman’s Hospital. It was great to have my mother here to open the new shop, eight years after opening the first.”
An unexpected turn
The Gormans opened their first store on Austin Friar Street in 2016, taking over the space from PC carpets. With a shop floor of 4,500 square feet, Anthony had a novel idea- one that would pay off in unforeseen ways.
“When we first opened the place was huge and we hadn’t got enough product to fill it. The place was enormous so we got beds, because beds take up a lot of space, and that made it looked like we had something in there. We had the flooring shop in the front and the beds in the back. As the flooring shop got bigger and bigger, we reduced the amount of beds but up to this day, people kept coming back looking for beds and then that led to this.”
The Gorman Group
This is the latest edition to The Gorman group which includes their Austin Friar Street Store, Irish Carpet Binding and Gorman Commercial, specialising in schools, hospitals, hotels and retail stores.
“We have a very good team of staff working with us,” Anthony said. “Garbhan Gorman, head of flooring, is my nephew and our trained and experienced fitting teams work directly for us, which for the customer means only one contact if they have a concern. This is key to good customer service.”
A whole-room service
With a made-to-measure service and delivery nationwide and beyond, plans are underway to expand the service offering in both shops.
“We are hoping to introduce a whole room service in the near future. People will be able to come in to get their full room done – lights, painting, floor, wallpaper everything, and we will do the whole lot.
“Maybe people have the money but don’t have the time to organise everyone. Perhaps they would like help with design, or have a tight schedule, either way we can do all of it from here. They will get a fixed price and a timeframe. We would very much like to do this.”
“We would very much like to thank our team of 12 staff for their ideas, dedication and hard work, our IT and web design team, our suppliers and our wonderful customers who so willingly support the business,” Sharon concluded.
For more information on the new store and the Gorman Group, call 085-2082210 or visit gormangroup.ie
