It is one of those hairbrained ideas that is so simple that you could kick yourself for not thinking of it first.
When Galway city man Dermot Ryan attended a family christening last February, a DVD of a log fire was playing on the flatscreen TV over the fire place.
Everyone remarked on the relaxing ambience it created and Dermot wondered aloud if there was an Irish turf fire version.
There were guffaws of laughter but it stuck in the salesman’s head and he went off to research the product that could just capture the imagination of the lucrative Irish American market which boasts 60 million consumers.
The colours of a turf fire are different to a log fire, he reasoned. It’s a much slower burn, the sounds are certainly more relaxed and overall the atmosphere created by turf burning on a hearth is uniquely Irish.
He set about sourcing some hand cut turf but found it a difficult task. Well over 95% of turf in the country is cut by machine and those who continue to use the sleán were reluctant to give it away. Eventually James O’Donnell harvested a load for him in Sean Amhac in Carraroe. He then ran up against a hurdle when trying to find a traditional fire place in which to set his peat alight, with almost all the fireplaces in the city closed up.
They ended up filming in the Tower Room of the 15th Century Cloonacauneen Castle, just off the N17 near Claregalway. The film records the fire from when it kicks into a blaze and then dies down with smouldering embers over the course of 65 minutes.
He had the DVDs manufactured in Castlebar and packaged them himself. He sought help from all the local enterprise agencies but none were willing to give a hand. Eventually he decided to take the bull by the horns and went to a show in New Jersey, where all the Irish and Celtic shops in the US do their buying for the year. He rented a room in a hotel and sat there for four days with his fire DVD playing on a cheap player he had bought waiting for a knock at the door.
Dermot hit the jackpot on the first knock - and Dianne O’Connor, who owns Creative Irish Gifts, the biggest seller of Irish products in the world, was so impressed by the DVD she asked that it be included in their Autumn catalogue, of which five million are sent around the US.
After that it was sales of tens and 20s by individual shops until in arrived three women representing the TV shopping channel QVC, which is beamed into 94 million homes across the States. He was invited to come on and sell the product from their headquarters in Pennsylvania during the Rose of Tralee special, which features Irish products exclusively for 24 hours.
The shopping channel is a peculiarly American phenomenon, located on the dial between two of the biggest channel, CBS and NBC. The research shows that when the average person switches between these prime channels, they are likely to take in two minutes of QVC, so in six minutes there are three sets of audiences.
Prior to Dermot performing on his live broadcast, he was given a full-day’s workshop in which he learned to treat the exercise as a chat over the back fence. There should be no hard sell, as this was the job of the host. You are talking with only one person, which is the host.
His five-and-a-half minutes of fame came early on a Wednesday morning when he had to entice millions of Americans to invest in an “Irish peat turf fire”.
“The main thing is to talk about the product and with the three audiences you have to repeat the same thing over and over again,” reflects Dermot.
“I was very nervous before going on, but once you are on, you are put at your ease by the host. There are cameras but no cameramen as it’s all done by remote control. You have this thing in your ear where you are told to repeat certain spike words that produce more orders. In my case it was family gathering and anything to do with family.”
This tiny stint on live TV can make or break a product. An Irish knitwear company sold €2 million of clothes over 12 hours on the same show. In total €11 million of Irish goods were flogged over the 24-hour period. Recently Whitney Houston released her new album exclusively on the channel.
Just under 2,000 units of his DVD sold, with more orders coming in through QVC’s online shop. He was immediately contacted by the Irish Tourist Board in New York, which wants to include the DVD in all their promotional gift packs, and the Alzheimers Society, who believe it could be a great product for older people who love fires. Most of the DVDs come with peat incense, which evokes the all-important smell of the burning sods.
Dermot is convinced there is big business ahead with his turf on film. Afterall, this is a country which sells Irish soil in a bowl with shamrock seeds and soil in a canister to throw over a coffin. A tiny bail of briquettes can fetch $29.
He has another equally simple project up his sleeve that could tap into the massive religious market. His next goal is to get onto the channel’s St Patrick’s Day Show.
For the man who worked in the family travel business in town and then sold property in Spain, this is perhaps the easiest sell of them all.
“It just shows that if you have an idea, you should run with it even if you are on your own,” he says with a belly laugh.
The DVD is available from Treasure Chest on Shop Street and online at www.irishturffire.com