A function today organised by Carlow County Council’s Local Enterprise Office and held in Ballykealey House Hotel saw the winners of six categories in the Carlow Enterprise Awards announced.
Category winners were presented with their awards by Cllr. Fintan Phelan, Cathaoirleach of Carlow County Council. Speaking at the awards ceremony Cllr. Phelan said “The aim of the National Enterprise Awards is to showcase, encourage and support a culture of enterprise and entrepreneurship in our communities in Ireland, to promote entrepreneurship and to showcase, encourage and to celebrate the achievement of clients of the LEOs.”
Speaking to all of the finalists, who are client companies of the Local Enterprise Office, Cllr. Phelan added “Our clients in Carlow are based in our local towns and rural areas and have availed of both financial and soft supports to help them build grow and scale their business and now may be enjoying success and making strides in areas such as business growth, turnover, employment, new product development, export markets and innovation. To all of you gathered here today as our finalists, I congratulate you for putting yourself forward to share your story of business success and for giving us the opportunity to work with you to promote and showcase your business. We know your schedules are busy as owner managers of SMEs and we appreciate your investment of time in participating in the National Enterprise Awards.”
Feedalpha, which is based in Enterprise House, on O’Brien Road, will now represent Carlow against representatives of the other 30 Local Enterprise Offices at the National Enterprise Awards, which will be held in Dublin’s Mansion House in June.
Feedalpha is a one stop platform for SMEs to manage and grow their online presence through social media. Feedalpha is the first platform to market that allows customers to search for content, schedule it at a time that suits and share it out to all their social media accounts in one go, all backed by artificial intelligence and data analytics to help users create the right content and share it when their customers are most likely to see it. The business is led by Gary Evans who has an extensive background in IT.
The other category winners announced were The Big Idea – Best Start Up; Nicola Brown Fine Art Textiles – One to Watch; Murphy’s Craft Butchers Tullow – Green/Sustainability Award; Carlow Toolmaking Services – Innovation Award; Coelrind – Best Exporter. The winners of the County Final shared a prize fund of €10,000.
Speaking about the supports of the business community from Carlow County Council , Chief Executive , Kathleen Holohan said “through our Local Enterprise Office , Carlow County Council is providing vital services to assist our local business communities and we want to ensure that our SMEs take advantage of the various supports available to them through the LEO offices and the wider state sector”. Kathleen continued to say, “later in the month we will launch the inCarlow Economic Development & Business Support Strategy which creates a framework for our vision for economic development and business support for the next five years. and As a Local Authority we strive to create a dynamic environment for businesses to start, develop and grow and support local job creation”.
Awards’ organiser for the County Final , Seamus Doran, Assistant Head of Economic Development & Enterprise with the Local Enterprise Office added “We are delighted with the level of interest in this year’s awards and The National Enterprise Awards are the leading forum for recognising the success of small businesses in Ireland. The National Enterprise Awards offer a huge opportunity to any ambitious business to place themselves in the spotlight and to showcase what they have to offer to a national audience. We are delighted to have a business with the calibre and ambition of Feedalpha represent Carlow in the national final. The quality of small businesses in Carlow was really highlighted by the range of businesses who won category awards today and by those excellent businesses who were shortlisted but were unsuccessful in winning one of the categories on this occasion. I have no doubt some of them will be representing Carlow in the National Enterprise Awards in the coming years.”
