Saturday, June 16, 2012

Last Chance For A Bloomsday Purchase

As you wander about Dublin today, viewing the sites that once were  seen by James Joyce or following the footsteps of his most famous character, Leopold Bloom, stop by the Dublin Woollen Mills shop and buy something.

It's the last chance at the family-owned shop that's been open since 1888. The Roche family is shutting it down.

Fans of all things Joycean know that the author once worked as a salesman for the firm, selling quality Irish haberdashery abroad.

Sadly, times have changed to such an extent that the owners cannot, or care not to, keep it going. The shop is profitable, they say, and they have seen an uptick in interest since the financial crisis struck with a vengeance, but government bureaucracy is too heavy a burden to carry any longer.

For all those women who started up home-based businesses that produced hand-knit items or one-off hats, they will have to go elsewhere for their supplies. Dressmakers who earned a little money from their skill and an ability to buy fabric cheap and sell finished garments at a profit may find that their business model no longer works.

Depending on wholesale costs, those craft industries just might go the way of Dublin Woollen Mills. In tough economic times, you cannot raise your prices and expect to keep your clients. And when you've started up your little cottage industry because you couldn't find any other job, it's not a positive outlook.

So cross the Ha'penny Bridge and walk up to the shop. Touch the knob that James Joyce once touched, walk the floors where the author once walked, and wonder why a government that says it's all for jobs fails to notice the little places that don't make a lot of noise.

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