'This is a 102-year-old family business - you don’t want anything to go wrong on your watch'

“I DON’T THINK there’s any business degree that will tell you what’s the right and wrong thing to do on any given day,” says Vicki O’Toole, managing director of Limerick-based packaging supplier JJ O’Toole Ltd.

“There are processes, but you have got to go with your gut feeling and we’re doing it every single day here.”

Founded in 1914, JJ O’Toole supplies paper bags, takeaway coffee cups, luxury hat boxes and other packaging for retailers. The firm counts Dunnes Stores, Brown Thomas, Avoca and Selfridges among its clients.

Running a family business carries a certain amount of extra weight, says O’Toole, “because of the history that’s involved”.

“A family business is unique. You’re very passionate about it because it’s your name over the door. You really guard it. You don’t want anything to go wrong, certainly not under your watch.

“It’s firefighting a lot of the time. I’m amazed. We’re 102-years-old and we’re still in the classroom.”

O’Toole is particularly protective because she married into the business, which “does complicate things slightly”.

Vicki O'Toole

Entrepreneurial spirit

She joined the company in 2002 and took over as managing director in 2008 when her late husband Fergus became unwell.

That said, she knew all about the workings of a family business long before she married Fergus: her great-great-grandfather established McMahons Builders Providers which is now run by her brother Mark.

Reflecting on where her own entrepreneurial spirit came from – which was dormant for a number of years – O’Toole remembers her father talking about his company every week at Sunday lunch.

“Daddy was a great businessman,” she says. “He would always be talking to my brother about business. I didn’t think I was all that interested, but I must have been.”

She worked as a stock taker in one of the company’s home improvement centres, “counting all the screws and nails – can you imagine?” Other than that, she had little to do with the business.

Prompted by her father, O’Toole went on to study law at University College Cork.

“He told me quite young that it would be handy if I did law because we spent a lot of money on solicitors,” O’Toole explains. “His idea for me to be involved in the business was as a solicitor.”

However, it wasn’t meant to be and she dropped out after a year: “Law didn’t like me or I didn’t like law. I can’t make up my mind what happened there.”

She moved to France to work as an au pair and learn a language. When she returned to Ireland, she flirted with the idea of working in banking. It was at that time that she met Fergus.

“I was offered a good job in AIB and I married Fergus instead,” she says. “His mother didn’t think I should work, the old-fashioned way. I thought that was a great idea at the time.”

The couple went on to have five children and for many years O’Toole worked as a homemaker.

Besides occasionally doing administrative work to cover employees on maternity leave, O’Toole wasn’t involved in the business.

“I knew what was kind of going on,” she says. “If they got a new order for Superquinn or whatever, I would kind of know about it.”

Plastic bag levy

Her journey to becoming head of the company was a gradual one.

“Fergus got sick around 2001,” she explains. “I can’t remember exactly the timing of it all, but it would have been around 2002 that I came in the door here on a very, very part-time situation. I came in really to support him more mentally than anything else.”

She entered the company the same time the plastic bag levy came in.

“It was a disaster for us. I don’t think anybody in the packaging industry realised the impact it would have.”

O’Toole’s untapped business acumen kicked in and she decided the company needed to reposition itself and start supplying paper products again.

She started looking for partners abroad and “got obsessed with it”. From there, her appetite for the industry grew.

As she became more immersed in the company, O’Toole became more involved in the sales side of the business.

She started sitting in on sales meetings and decided to chase her own account.

Her first order came from Amanda Pratt of Avoca. “She believed in me and I got on very well from there.”

Another turning point for O’Toole was when she went on her first buying trip to Asia.

“We had a purchasing manager who did all the trips to China himself. I decided to go to meet the suppliers. He said to me that there was no point because they wouldn’t listen to a woman. I said, ‘But if I have money to spend, sure they will?’

“It was funny because they thought I was a man. When they were putting my itinerary together, they wrote: ‘Mr Vicky, we’re really looking forward to meeting you.’”

She says they were surprised when they realised she was actually a woman, but were happy to do business.

“Once I got to the factories, that was the best thing that happened to me. It was really scary at the beginning, but now I do it all the time.

“My favourite part was going through their sample rooms and seeing all the different types of packaging they were supplying to customers all around the world.”

That is where the inspiration comes from for the firm’s luxury options.

“It’s so important that we’re ahead of everybody else. I’m actually obsessed with packaging – the sadness of it all.”

When O’Toole eventually took over as managing director of the company, her greatest challenge was convincing colleagues and customers that she was the right person for the job.

“You can imagine being a woman, who wasn’t an O’Toole and had no experience … (I had to) prove to them that I was going to add value.

“At the beginning, I didn’t know what I was doing. As time went on, it was understanding the processes and what we could change and for (colleagues) to believe that I was the right person to bring the company forward.”

The business has been profitable under O’Toole’s watch. According to the most recently filed accounts, the company reported a profit of over €375,000 in the financial year that ended 30 June 2015, pushing accumulated profits to over €1.1 million.

UK market

One of O’Toole’s best decisions was hiring two in-house graphic designers. That made it easier for the company to compete in the luxury market and quickly turn around artwork and design concepts for high-end clients.

“We probably do too much for the customer. We do a lot of the designing and don’t charge them. A lot of companies would got to a branding agency.”

Last summer, the company won a major tender to supply bags for Selfridges department stores in the UK, a customer it had worked with in the past.

The company has now set its sights firmly on the British market: “If we can do Selfridges, we can do anyone that’s in that ilk,” O’Toole says.

One of her five children has expressed an interest in becoming the next generation to head up the firm.

But they are under no pressure to take over when the time comes. O’Toole simply wants “to have the engine running nicely” if they decide to sit in the hot seat.

Vicki O’Toole spoke at the ‘Women in Family Business’ workshop organised by the DCU Centre for Family Business. The workshop is the first in a series of three aimed at creating awareness around diversity in family business leadership.