RENAISSANCE MAN

Eoin Costello has always been a busy man. He’s just sold the web hosting business he’s nurtured for eight years, Novara Ltd, to Digiweb, Ireland’s largest broadband provider. It represents another giant step for an entrepreneur whose energy and drive to succeed have taken him from the hectic

investment rooms of London’s City, through the subtleties of handling a family business, and on to the challenges of the ever-evolving internet and the hard-neck world of e-commerce.

In the maelstrom of such demanding occupations, he also succeeded in getting elected to Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, and has served on the boards and chaired a number of enterprise and internet bodies. Now in his early forties, he has embraced a lifestyle of constant re-invention, and the rewards have been both commercially and personally satisfying.

At some point every entrepreneur entertains the idea that their business may be snapped up by another company. It is surely the ultimate praise that another company is so impressed by the progress and position of a business that it is worth acquiring. Novara achieved that value through far-sighted and clear thinking at the top, and the nurturing and advancement of talent among its hard-working staff. Eoin’s success is undoubtedly based on the time he has consistently spent re-skilling in order to achieve his goals, and this attitude of renaissance has filtered through the firm, allowing the business to grasp opportunities on the horizon.

Novara began in a spare bedroom back in 2000. After graduating from Trinity College in Dublin, Eoin spent five years working as an analyst and fund manager in London for leading stock broking companies, handling client funds worth over £130m. Keen to cast his eye for a profit closer to home, he returned to Dublin in 1997 to learn the family business, the Costello chain of jewellery stores. He got stuck in, running their branch in Cornelscourt and soon achieving the second highest result in Ireland in the National Association of Goldsmiths Diploma; but he realised that if he was to marry his talents for high-end commercial activity, there was greater potential elsewhere.

He decided to sell his part of the business. “I wanted to build a business with national growth potential,” Eoin recalls. “With a number of jewellery chains already in existence in Ireland at the time it was unlikely that I was going to be able to grow the jewellery business nationally. This realization coincided with the explosion of awareness of the internet and in 1999 I decided that the internet held huge potential for new businesses.”

Growth in e-commerce worldwide was phenomenal – everyone in bricks-and-mortar business wanted to develop a web presence and Eoin saw the lucrative possibilities in hosting web sties, offering high quality back-up services, and providing the crucial domain names that have since become prized assets of Novara’s clients.
 
“The first three years were extremely difficult with the departure of the technical manager, the closure of the data centre where all our equipment was stored and the ending of the dot com bubble,” recalls Eoin. His commitment never flagged during the hard times, with the needs of the business requiring him to re-mortgage his house. But as with so many successful entrepreneurs, he was glad to accept help where he could find it.

“Over the eight year life of Novara Dublin City Enterprise Board made a number of critical inputs. The first was the appointment of Mary Cryan as a mentor to us who was a major help in getting us re-focused after the difficulties of the first couple of years. The next big help from DCEB was their investment of convertible redeemable preference shares, which made it possible for us to invest in the hardware required to take the business on to the next level. These two interactions with DCEB helped turn Novara from loss into profit in 2005 and we have been profitable ever since.
 “A turning point came when we acquired Tornado Hosting Ltd which gave us access to high value dedicated server clients and helped us build our revenue rapidly. However hosting as a business is quite mature now with some very large European and US companies in the space. Therefore international growth possibilities for Irish hosting companies are somewhat limited.

“At the time of sale the sale to Digiweb in April, Novara held 6.5% share of the Irish market with in excess of 10,000 customers, was highly profitable with zero debt and had one of the lowest staff to turnover ratios in the industry.

“We put a lot of effort into staff training and motivation which paid off through productivity. The key motivations for the sale were our customers and our staff. As a rapidly growing international company Digiweb provided both with greater long-term potential than Novara on its own could.
“Most of my work in the immediate aftermath of the sale is making sure our customers and staff are happy. Since the deal I’ve spent a lot of time on the phone to customers, large and small, to tell them the news and answer any questions they had. I’ve also spent a lot of time with Novara colleagues making sure that they were happy. Everyone in Novara received equivalent positions at Digiweb so it was good news all round.”
And what next for Eoin? “I negotiated a deal with Digiweb whereby I am entirely free to start work on my next venture, which is not in the hosting area!”

PHOTO: Eoin Costello, Managing Director, Novara.ie
Dan King, Hosting and Managed Infrastructure Manager with Digiweb

© 2008 Dublin City Enterprise Board. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without the permission from the D.C.E.B.

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