Two chosen to represent county

Two Cork businesses are set to compete against 28 other businesses at the National Enterprise Awards in Dublin next month.

These are Ground Wellbeing and RetroKit who were awarded Local Enterprise Awards from Cork County Council’s respective Local Enterprise Offices (LEO) in South Cork and Cork North and West.

Ground Wellbeing and RetroKit received the accolade for building successful businesses despite the challenging times of the past two years.

Award-winning spa consultant Peigín Crowley created her now burgeoning business Ground Wellbeing at the kitchen table during lockdown in 2020. Born from a desire to make wellness and selfcare accessible to all, Peigín has created a unique brand which is fast becoming a wellness staple.

Peigín said: “The concept of Ground is simple - to create luxury spa experiences at home with honest natural products that do the body good. Since the beginning, the LEO in South Cork has been an enormous support with trading online vouchers, priming grants, mentoring and the export programme. They have been there for me from the beginning which has been a lifeline in growing the business so steadily in such challenging times.”

Representing LEO Cork North and West, RetroKit, was founded by Xavier Dubuisson, Shay Kavanagh and Susan O’Flaherty. RetroKit is Ireland’s first digital platform dedicated to housing providers and the home energy renovation sector as a support in planning and implementing home energy upgrade projects at scale.

The platform uses big data and machine learning systems to facilitate decision-making, increase productivity and reduce costs.

Susan said: “We were all too aware of the enormous challenge in Ireland and globally to retrofit millions of homes by 2030, so the aim of RetroKit is to make this process more efficient for retrofit professionals, allowing them to streamline their processes and reduce costs through digitalisation.”