Irish Women In Business: Maggie Mangan of Cloon Keen Atelier

In the latest in a series of editorials focusing on Irish women in business, we spoke to Maggie Mangan of Cloon Keen Atelier. Becoming a perfumer isn't one of the most obvious career choices but that it just what Canadian-born Maggie decided to do when she set up Cloon Keen Atelier with her husband in 2002. The company takes an artisanal approach to fragrance and have become highly regarded in this competitive field, being nominated for a prestigious FIFI Award by The Fragrance Foundation in 2013 and being chosen to scent the candles, lotions and diffusers during the Queen's historic visit to Ireland in 2011.

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How did you get into the perfumery business? After working in the film industry for ten years, my husband Jules and I wanted both move back to Ireland from London and work for ourselves. Armed with those criteria, I remembered an article that I read when I was working on a film in Canada ten years earlier about the business of making scented candles. So, we bought all of the candle making equipment and supplies and started our new venture in my parents’ garage in Galway. I still sometimes can’t believe that my parents let us use their garage! I was always drawn to fragrance but didn’t have any particular skills in this field. However, as the business progressed, I became more and more interested in the mysterious creators of perfume and I wanted to learn the language that they speak. So, I started with learning the ingredients or ‘notes’ of a perfume by slowly building a perfume organ. Then when I had the ingredients, I learnt the structure of perfume (chypre, aldehydic etc). During this time, I always had my nose in a book reading about the history of perfume and ordering as many samples as I could (I have thousands). This is when I started understanding the different styles of perfumers. All of this made me think ‘How would I make a perfume differently?’. I wanted our perfumes to have an understated simplicity and preciseness but at the same time, have a dramatic quality to them. This is now the Cloon Keen Atelier style. What were your goals with setting up Cloon Keen Atelier? We wanted to build a local artisan business that was part of the fabric of Galway. It was also very important to us to have creativity and quality at the core of Cloon Keen Atelier. What are the biggest challenges that you face? I think, as with most businesses, it is usually money. What sets Cloon Keen Atelier apart from its competitors? With perfumes, and especially niche fragrances, the perfume has to say something different and approach the ingredients in a unique way. Like music, there has to be a ‘hook’ that makes a perfume irresistible. So, originality has always been something that we focus on when developing a perfume. Our style is very pared down and simple but with surprising ‘hooks’. Also, our customers respond to the authenticity of our products. We make all of our collections in Galway and it gives that indefinable ‘something’ to our products. Finally, selling our products through our own store makes a huge difference in experiencing our collections. My husband was a set designer in film and he created a physical mood in our shop that helped customers to identify with our collection. What has been the highlight of your career so far? It’s actually the little things that mean the most. For instance, I had a young woman come into the shop a couple of weeks ago. She was buying some linen sprays for her mother. She told me that she was moving away and her mother was giving her a linen spray because it was the smell of home. It was lovely that a fragrance that we made reminded her of home. To me, the joy of scent is linked to the nostalgia it creates and we are so happy to be part of our customers’ scent memories! Do you think that women face additional challenges in business or has this ever been an issue for you? Fortunately, no I haven’t, but I do think that women face additional challenges to men. Cloon Keen Atelier was chosen to provide the candles at Dublin Castle during the Queen’s visit to Ireland. How did that come about and what did it mean for the company? When we launched in Arnotts, the Beauty Buying Director Anne O’Neill recommended our products to Dublin Castle for the event. It was a fantastic to be involved in such a historic event. We were over the moon! What is your favourite product from the collection? I adore Sybarite perfume...it is just what we wanted to create. What do you hope to achieve with Cloon Keen Atelier in the future? Our main goal is now scaling up our manufacturing capacities, distribution networks and marketing efforts so that the transition from a local business to an international business runs smoothly and efficiently. For more information on Cloon Keen Atelier, log on to www.cloonkeenatelier.com.