Novara (2000-2008 )

Seeing great opportunities in the Internet revolution of the late nineties he took the courageous step of selling his share of the family jewellery business in 2000 to set up Novara.ie, thereby becoming the first in Ireland to sell a traditional retail business to develop a purely Internet business. He set about re-skilling himself for the new challenge by taking an evening course in Ebusiness development with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Enterprise Board and a course in HTML coding in Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

Starting from a spare bedroom in his house the new business got off to a rocky start. Established just as the ".com" boom was collapsing, by the end of the company's first year trading his partnership with Stephen Mc Carron (now MD, Hosting365) had ended. This was followed shortly after by the announcement that the Worldport data centre (where all the company's servers were located) was closing with just 3 weeks notice with Novara’s entire customer base getting these emails from Hosting365, a high pressure migration out of Worldport followed. Once completed he had to start into a major renovation of the offices that Novara had contracted to occupy in order to bring them up to meet health and safety standards.

As a result of taking hard decisions Eoin has built Novara.ie into one of Ireland’s top three hosting companies with in excess of 10,000 clients , won numerous awards and received plenty of press coverage and profiles

He has played an active role in the Irish Internet community serving as Director of the Irish Internet Association (completing a Guide To Domain Registration ) and as Vice Chairman of the ISP Association of Ireland (2004-2006).

Eager to encourage the positive use of the internet in Irish schools and third level institutions Eoin established Ireland’s first educational website competition( the School & University Internet Awards, www.suia.org) in 1999 putting up £15,000 of his own money to get the Awards off the ground.

He was awarded the Irish Domain Registry Internet Champion Award in 2002 by the board of the IEDR in recognition for his work in establishing the School & University Internet Awards.

Happy investors in Novara include Dublin Business Innovation Centre.

Digiweb, one of Ireland’s top 3 biggest ISPs, acquired Novara in 2008

At the time of sale Novara held 6 1/2% share of the Irish market, was highly profitable with zero debt and had one of the best staff to sales ratios in the industry thanks to Novara’s considerable investment in in-house developed automation software. Novara also had a high staff retention rate and high staff productivity because the company put a lot of effort into processes for staff training and motivation.

Commentary on the acquisition from Ireland’s respected hosting commentator John McCormack:

Digiweb's takeover of Novara has altered the Irish hosting business in that it is the first major takeover of a Tier 2 hoster. NOVARA.IE gives DIGIWEB an extra element - blue-chip credibility. While NOVARA.IE was not the cheapest hoster in the market it has built up a blue-chip client base.

Eoin’s message to Novara customers concerning the sale

He regularly contributes to conferences. Previous contributions included:

1.Fingal County Enterprise Board Ecommerce Programme (talk gave SME’s free advice on getting started online.

2. PANEL Dublin Seed Capital Meeting

3.Talk to (MBA class at Smurfit Business School), UCD on Opportunity Recognition in business.

4. Speaker at the 3rd Online Edge Seminar organized by Digiweb. Presentation attached