I never met Pat and Paul’s mother Kay O’Connell but by all accounts you wouldn’t want to mess with her! She began buying direct from the trawlers in Castletownbere and selling in The English Market way back in the 60’s. Kay obviously instilled a strong work ethic in her boys (whose own children now run the two outlets) as Pat insisted they remain trading during the construction phase. Besides the busy daily trade within the market, K O’Connell also supply a large amount of restaurant about the city. Sure enough they pulled it off!
The brief here was to rationalise the workspace, facilitate higher capacity in terms of production and storage and give the stall an overall refresh. Context was absolutely everything and nobody understands the idiosyncrasies of trading in a marketplace like the O’Connells. I worked with Pat on developing the scheme from start to finish. Kevin Smyth came on board as project architect.
It was a challenging project in many ways; works were to be carried out by night only and being an old building the market threw up some nice surprises along the way. Not to mention the logistics of manoeuvring that 13 meter long fish counter! But we got there in the end, and as a result workflow improved immesurably, having a positive effect on both morale and the bottom line; both important factors in a business.
The visual identity and branding work I developed for this project was carried through when K O’Connell Fishmongers were invited to open in Dunnes Stores alongside James Whelan Butchers and Sheridans Cheesemongers.
