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The evening before Irish Country Living is due to interview Oonagh O’Hagan, we get an email asking if it is possible to move the meeting back an hour as “something urgent” has come up.
When she warmly welcomes us the next morning at her home on Dublin’s Raglan Road, the award-winning businesswoman explains how she had to rejig her schedule to cover the morning shift so one of her staff members could attend a last-minute hospital appointment.
Clearly, the CEO of Meaghers Pharmacy is not afraid to roll her sleeves up and get behind the chemist counter – rather, she relishes it.
“You get more information than you can from Excel spreadsheets because you’re right beside the customer,” she says.
Oonagh O'Hagan. Photo: Philip Doyle
And perhaps it’s this commitment that has seen Meaghers (“as in the chocolate bar” she explains of the pronunciation) grow from just one to eight pharmacies since Oonagh convinced the bank to lend her £2m to buy her first business, even though she was still paying off her student loan at the time.
“If I was doing it now, I’d think twice about it,” she admits with a laugh.
“But I suppose lack of fear when you’re young, you’ve nothing to lose. I guess that’s what I thought: ‘Sure what can possibly go wrong?’”
£2m in two weeks
But then, business is in her blood.
Originally from Plumbridge, at the foothills of the Sperrin Mountains in Co Tyrone, her father Malachy was a building contractor and still works to this day, while her mother Elizabeth ran the Daintifyt (later Courtaulds Lingerie) factory, which made underwear for Marks & Spencer.
She explains how going to work with her mother as a young girl taught her the earliest lessons about being a leader in business.
“What really impacted on me was how she worked within that team and how she would rally those girls,” says Oonagh.
“And now I would recognise that I do a lot of things that she used to do.”
After school, Oonagh moved to Dublin to study pharmacy and first came across the original Meaghers Pharmacy on Baggot St when she called in to buy a pair of tweezers.
I think from the minute I walked in the door, I fell in love with that shop.
She later asked then-owner Pierce Meagher if she could do her internship there.
From behind the counter, however, she noticed that many of the customers were young women with disposable income who were interested in buying the latest make-up or skincare ranges but that the chemist did not have the stock to match.
“There was loads of opportunity,” says Oonagh, who, on the last day of her internship, asked Pierce to let her know if he ever planned to sell the business.
“And he said yeah he would, just to get me out the door,” she jokes. “But four years later, I got that call.”
Golden opportunity
Pierce explained that he had an offer of £2m from a multinational chain, but if Oonagh could match it then he would sell to her.
“I was paying off my student loan still,” she recalls, but with only about two weeks to make a counter offer, she eventually wrangled a meeting with AIB and put together a business plan over one weekend after buying a “how to” book in Hodges Figgis.
“And printed it out in Trinity because I didn’t have a printer at home. I didn’t have a computer!” she recalls of her pitch, which was all centred around customer service.
“I remember coming out thinking: ‘Well, that was my best shot,’” she says.“But it was only a few days later and they phoned and they said they would back me.”
Working as a team
So, on 1 September 2001, Oonagh officially took over Meaghers with a two-pronged plan.
The first was to focus on quality; taking beauty products or vitamins that people could buy in their local supermarket off the shelf and replacing them with “destination brands” to attract their target customer.
The second was developing a reputation for expert advice to differentiate Meaghers from larger chains, with in-store services such as iron tests or blood pressure checks.
“So it’s very much service-driven as opposed to being a self-select model,” explains Oonagh.
And with a 30% rise in turnover in the first year, it obviously worked – even with competition from Boots literally a stone’s throw from their store.
However, Oonagh realised that if she was really going to compete with the larger chains, she would need to scale up to avail of better deals by upping her purchasing power.
And so, she gradually began to build the group to include six pharmacies in strategic locations throughout Dublin.
For instance, taking a premises in Barrow St, where Google had just set up, with a built-in GP surgery to bring in business.
Fast-forward to 2008, however, and “the world changed”. Not only were people not spending on “Lancôme or Chanel anymore”, but dispensary turnover plummeted 38% almost overnight as a result of Government cuts to the drugs payments scheme.
Oonagh admits that the financial crisis left her “completely overwhelmed”, especially as many of her staff had partners who had been let go from their own jobs.
I had a lot of worried staff who felt like: ‘Oh God, we’re not going to be able to pay the mortgage.’ So the last thing I wanted to do was have a load of lay-offs as well.
“We’re just a very close-knit team anyway – more like a family than anything else – and so I didn’t want to lose anybody.”
And she maintains that it was working as a team that saw Meaghers survive the recession, after she called a staff meeting one “dark, dreary” October night to brainstorm a new strategy for the group.
“They came up with all the ideas,” says Oonagh, explaining how staff suggestions ranged from introducing new health checks to reposition themselves “as the next best thing to a GP” to organising in-store events and working with beauty bloggers and social media “influencers”.
It obviously worked. Oonagh has since opened another two pharmacies as well as an online store, with approximately 120 people employed.
The customer breakdown is 80% female and 20% male, with the majority being young professionals aged 25-35 who are passionate about health and wellbeing.
“A lot of people would see us as the go-to pharmacy to come to make sure you don’t get sick, rather than the place you go when you do get sick,” explains Oonagh.
Health of the nation
That said, working on the frontline, Oonagh is in a unique position to see the challenges in the health of the nation.
She identifies diabetes as a major issue (“there’s probably 10% of the population walking around who are diabetic, but they don’t even know it”) as well as obesity, but has also seen a surge in mental health issues such as stress and anxiety.
She would love a change in regulation to allow pharmacies play a more active role in healthcare, just like in the UK where they have the minor ailment scheme allowing them to offer advice and certain medicines for common complaints.
There’s just so much more we could do as professionals because we’re really highly trained and we could be treating people in the community to free up either GPs or the hospitals.
“Just look at what we’ve done with flu vaccinations. Our immunisation rate is really increased, it’s a cost-saving to the Government because we can do it much cheaper, so it’s a win-win, and then all the patients are being immunised and they’re not in hospital or they’re not off sick.”
Going For Growth
As well as her role with Meaghers, Oonagh is a lead mentor with the Going For Growth programme for female entrepreneurs.
She sees lack of confidence as the main challenge for the women she mentors, with many waiting until they have every box “ticked” before they take a leap.
However, she maintains that she has always learned more from her mistakes than from her successes.
“It’s never going to be perfect, no matter what it is,” she counters.
So just go for it, accept the feedback – whatever it is – accept that you are going to hear things are wrong and then change it in order to perfect it as you go.
Work aside, Oonagh is married to barrister Ronan Kennedy and has two children, Luca and Cassie.
Finding a balance is a struggle she admits – “we just do what we can do”– but she tries to collect the kids from school at least two days every week, and last year made the decision to take August off to spend quality family time together.
She credits the Revive Active supplement range for the energy to juggle all the challenges life can fling at you, while her favourite beauty products are all Irish and include Pestle & Mortar skincare, The Skin Nerd cleanse off mitt, Blank Canvas make-up brushes and the Sculpted by Aimee Connolly contour set.
“Always in my handbag!” she smiles of the latter.
You can just imagine her sharing the same cheerful recommendations with a customer on the shop floor – though she says that whenever she gets the chance, she asks shoppers for their feedback on how Meaghers is meeting their needs.
If they say ‘an eight’ I always say, ‘well, what would make it a 10?’.
And as she continues to strive to be the best, little wonder Oonagh O’Hagan has written the prescription for success.
For further information, visit www.meagherspharmacy.ie
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