Luck counts for alot Kev.
A lad that used to work here, left the IT scene in 2006 to follow his passion of sports psychology. He spotted a gap in the market and with a mix of IT, Sports psychology and a neck like a jockeys bollix he is after getting a couple of million in funding from angel investors in Silicon valley to bring his product to market.
Very nice website.
But poorly optimized.
Shirish is a good man to know it seems.
I’m sure he could do more with it alright but I think he has found the niche he needs already.
Rumors are that 7 of the worlds top 20 golfers will be wearing this device in 2012.
2 are wearing it already.
i dont want to be accused of begrudgery but it seems the more they had the more they wanted… its hard to feel that sorry for them… maybe dj will really live up to his nickname ‘the dodger’
Turns out Newman stiffed all the companies she “invested” in on Dragons Den. None of them have seen a penny from her.
Is that in the papers mate? I never liked her.
Yes mate, front page of Times. Some of the entrepreneurs even lost money on the deals after paying to get contracts drawn up and she then refused to sign them.
Instead of giving one of them the 20k she promised she instead tried to say the €20k was actually a €1,000 a day consultancy fee, so would give him 20 days work and no cash.
My favourite line:
“Newman, who once failed an aptitude test to become an air hostess, showed similar determination when she set up needahotel.com”
A compliment wrapped in a stinging insult.
Jaysus, I was wondering how the rather dull DJ was keeping her entertained. It seems a foolscap with “please turn over” written on both sides would keep her busy for hours.
'It takes a really, really long time to make it, and it’s really easy to lose it." So said Sarah Newman last year in an interview with Miriam O’Callaghan.
It was a comment delivered with a laugh, a deprecating aside in a chatty, informal interview, during which Sarah also revealed that she watched a lot of Dallas during her formative years growing up in England, and figured that, “if you wanted a nice big house with a swimming pool and huge shoulder pads, you’d have to go and work for yourself”. And work for herself she did, setting up needahotel.com and selling it, after 10 years, in 2006, for a sum reported as anywhere between €30 and €50 million (she has never confirmed the figure). She was just 36, and the move pitched her straight into the big time, establishing her as a poster girl of the Celtic Tiger and, very quickly, something of a celebrity
But this week, following judgments against her and her partner, legendary Kilkenny hurler DJ Carey in the Commercial Court, the image no longer appears quite as burnished. Will they become the latest casualties of Ireland’s very own Gotterdammerung? Players in a story we’re far too familiar with by now – staggering success followed by rapid ascension to a fabulous, lavish lifestyle, then a sickening public crash? Neither Newman nor Carey have contested the judgment (although they dispute claims that they failed to submit proposals regarding repayment arrangements), but the usual stinging schadenfreude is notably absent.
Instead of that righteous hint of “serves them right” that has accompanied the misfortunes of many of the hard-hit property developers, there is genuine regret for a couple who managed to combine public profile with decency and generosity, who flew close to the sun, yes, but no closer than many of us. In many ways DJ and Sarah are something of an odd couple – she a vivacious, dynamic Essex girl, known as a tireless networker and enthusiastic socialiser; he a GAA hero, icon to sporting fans across the country, deeply rooted in community and, despite his business acumen, personally shy and modest. And yet they seemed to connect easily in a love of golf, in putting family first and a down-to-earth appreciation of their good fortune.
Notwithstanding Newman’s huge personal success, she showed a touching, even anachronistic, faith in Carey’s judgement and understanding, saying in a 2007 interview: “He’s my absolute soundboard. He’s a very level-headed, logical, stable, feet-on-the-ground type of guy and he would have added a completely different dimension to the way I approach business”; later adding: “Having a partner who doesn’t hold you back is very important.”
And indeed, neither held the other back, in fact, like all power couples, their appeal was better than doubled by the combination.
Together Sarah and DJ were sporting and media A-listers, an irresistible blend of glamour, talent and approachability, with the added frisson of spectacular, uncommon success, hers in the boardroom, his on the playing field. They were a golden couple, blending their families of two children each, all close in age, like a modern Brady Bunch. They were focussed and ambitious, yet still had time for the ethos of giving back, happy to work with young people, would-be entrepreneurs and women in business, mentoring and advising by example. For Sarah Newman, this all came together in her role on Dragons’ Den, in which she adopted a cool, slightly frosty demeanour, her black-rimmed glasses and coiffed blonde bob making her both sexy and stern. Sarah quickly became known as the toughest of the dragons, slow to invest, never taking a punt, cautious to the point of inactivity. She did invest – but displayed considerable circumspection, undoubtedly the legacy of her long slog to self-made success.
Newman was 25 and just married when she moved from Essex to Dublin, and got to work on her One Big Idea, a clever combination of internet savvy and a grasp of growing travel trends. In a talk she once gave to young entrepreneurs as part of a DIT series, Be Inspired, she described those days: “When I say I don’t think you know how lucky you are, I don’t mean to be patronising. I remember my grandparents telling me I didn’t know how lucky I was, and I remember thinking I’d never say that to anybody … But genuinely, I did not have the opportunities that a lot of you have available today … When I started my company 15 years ago, I moved to Ireland and I didn’t know anybody so I certainly couldn’t borrow money from a bank and I didn’t have any money.”
All she had was an idea, and ferocious energy. Having left school at 16 and worked for one of London’s biggest tour operators, she understood the business of selling hotel bedrooms, and that there is no replacement for hard graft. “I sat there on my first day and said ‘s**t, what have I done?’ I had no money, but … I knew that if I knocked on the door of every travel agent in Ireland, they would book with me.” And knock she did, repeatedly, returning again and again to each agency, North and South, until – either convinced or simply ground down – they gave her their business. She also befriended Caroline Green, one of the directors of Ryanair, and got herself a desk in their Phoenix Park call centre. There, too, she understood the need for the personal touch – “I used to canvas every single one of the call-centre staff daily, myself, and ask them, ‘please just ask everybody who books a flight with you, do they need a hotel.’” Gradually staff started transferring calls to her, and volume grew to the point where she could employ people to help her. But even then, “I was always the one who would work the longest shifts, the six-day week, the seven-day week. If someone had invented an eight-day week, I would have worked it.” Sales went from “zero” in the first month, to €100 million in 10 years, and when Newman concluded the deal with Cendant – by flying to Chicago for 48 hours; “we spat on our hands, something to do with a few margaritas, and I went back to Dublin without a single piece of paper, nothing signed” – she was remarkably generous to those who worked with her.
A newspaper report from the time described how each of the 75 employees, even those just newly joined, was given an envelope with a cheque for several thousand euros, all tax-free, as the company had already paid the Revenue Commissioners. It was an unusual gesture, and an indication, perhaps, of how thoroughly Newman learned the lessons of hardship during her years as a single mother of two children (her marriage broke up shortly after the move to Ireland), cash-strapped and dependent on the goodwill of others to make her dream a reality.
By the time of the sale to Cendant Corporation, Newman and Carey were a couple and happy to assume the kind of profile the press so badly wanted of them. They appeared formally together on No Frontiers, the RTE travel show, in 2004, and were regulars on the charity ball circuit, giving generously to a host of causes. These were the good years, for both of them. The sad break-down of DJ’s marriage, something that happened a year or so before he met Sarah – and specifically a frantic few weeks before the 2003 All-Ireland final, when rumours had reached critical mass and he lived in daily expectation of finding his private life splashed across the tabloid papers – was behind them. Both were working hard and successfully, while their four children – he had two sons, she a son and a daughter – seemed to gel better than expected. She became lady captain of the K Club, where she is a popular figure, known to take trouble with people, drawing them out and getting to know them.
Once needahotel.com was sold, Newman joined Carey as a director of DJ Carey Enterprises, and for a time they seemed to have the Midas touch, full of ambitious projects and a determination to replicate Newman’s early success. But it was not to be. Global meltdown and Ireland’s awful part in that did their worst.
Even assuming the lower estimate of needahotel.com’s sale to Cendant Corporation – €30 million – Newman did spectacularly well. And yet, just five years later, she is in what seems a surprisingly tricky financial situation. Judgments against Carey and Newman in the Commercial Court this week were for more than €9 million each in favour of AIB Mortgage Bank, the debts relating to cross-guarantees each gave in respect of the other’s liabilities. The judgment dates back to mortgage loans of €7.85 million and €1.5 million, from 2007, which allowed them to refinance existing debt and release equity on properties jointly owned. It is these properties which tell some of the tale – a tale easy enough for any of us to read; of inflated value, and a property bubble followed by spectacular, grisly collapse. The properties cited in the Commercial Court are a house at Mount Juliet and another at the K Club. The couple also own a grand Georgian home in Monkstown, where they mostly live, and a chalet in the chic ski resort of Zermatt, Switzerland. This gorgeous, luxurious spot, named after Sarah’s daughter, Grace, has double-height floor to ceiling windows on all three levels, five double bedrooms, a dining room that seats 14, a home cinema, games room with pool table, and a “wellness” centre including a sauna, shower room, massage room, Pilates/yoga space, outdoor hot tub and shower. It has been on the market since shortly after it was completed, with a price tag of €10.5 million, and is available to rent for around €30,000 a week, but in the current climate is attracting little attention.
Together with the free-fall of the property market, Carey’s core business – cleaning products – built up by him painstakingly over 18 years, has been in serious trouble since at least last year, when news emerged that it could go bust with debts of €1.7 million. Since then, DJ Carey Enterprises has been bought out by Western Hygiene, and he now works for them. At the time, Carey responded by telling friends: “It’s embarrassing, it’s shameful, it’s hurtful.” But he was already embroiled in worse, having been forced to call in the gardai fraud squad to investigate after funds could not be accounted for in the firm DJ Carey Enterprises, of which he and his sister, Catriona, were both at one time directors. Catriona stood down as a director in March 2009. The investigation is said to be concerned with cheques that DJ apparently never signed, although they were accepted by banks, and monies being transferred into unexpected accounts. The row is on-going – along with the news of DJ and Sarah Newman’s liabilities this week, came news that gardai are still investigating around €200,000 missing from the business – and is having a bitter effect on the Carey family. Catriona Carey set up a new company, along with another sister and her mother, apparently in competition with DJ’s firm.
An interview Sarah Newman gave in 2009, around the time of all this upset, when she went into business with healer Michael O’Doherty, and long before her slightly throw-away comment to Miriam O’Callaghan, casts considerable retrospective light on the couple’s possible troubles. “I want to dispel a myth right now – just because you’ve been successful in business, doesn’t mean you don’t have the same difficulties as everyone else. I have been under tremendous stress over the past 18 months. The general rule is the more you have, the more you’ve borrowed basically,” Newman said back then. “I have not been able to sell certain assets, they are no longer worth as much as they were, there are things that I had wanted to offload which are now a burden and I have to carry the cost of that. I’m also heavily involved in business enterprises where I have yet to get paid by clients, so cash flow is also a problem.” However, she concluded on a typically upbeat note; “Everyone is in the same boat. I now work more hours than I ever did in my life. But we all need to be strong to get through this difficult time.”
Speaking about DJ, and his response to O’Doherty’s healing abilities, she was perhaps even more revealing: “DJ has found that he is a lot more positive now, he feels stronger and he has far more energy than before. If you’re under a huge amount of pressure it is like someone switches off a light and for DJ it was like someone unplugged his power support. But ever since he visited Michael, it’s like a cloud has been lifted,” she continued. “There’s only so much you can do when you’re under pressure. It affects home life, children, family and it’s important to put things in perspective and realise the important thing is you do have a wonderful family and children.”
It is an indication of the couple’s order of priorities, in which family seems always to take centre-stage. Rumours of their impending marriage have been doing the rounds for a couple of years now, ever since Sarah was first spotted wearing a large diamond on her ring finger, and she has always protested that she wants a small, low-key wedding.
Whether the couple’s current troubles will set back that wedding further remains to be seen, but certainly their path out of this sticky spot will be a tough one. The Commercial Court judge agreed a stay in relation to DJ, but has refused any such in relation to Newman, largely because of difficulties with jurisdiction over Chalet Grace, and AIB wants to move quickly against it.
Whatever happens next will test the character and resilience of the one-time golden couple, but there is every chance they will make it through. Both have track records that show hard work, and an ability to recognise and grab chances. As Newman put it in her DIT Be Inspired lecture: “You can’t look back, because you can’t change the past. But can leave your mark on history, so go on and get on with it. You can find a way and you can always find solutions. Our ancestors didn’t sit there and say, ‘bugger this, it’s far too hard work.’”
It was good advice then, it’s good advice now.
:lol: :lol: :o
She is profiled in the SBP today also. You get the feeling the whole Mount Juliet investment was all DJ’s doing though. It appears she was just acting a guaranteur for DJ in this deal… to the tune of 8 million. She forked in over a million of her own.
Did these houses come with their own oil well or something?
Beats me, you’d think if you got €30 million for a business you’d just buy a nice house and tip away.
Would you not be able to buy Mount Juliet and the K Club for what they paid for a gaffe there? Unbelieveable really.
Exactly, i can’t understand it myself. You’d think that with the fortunes some of these people made they could relax and play it safe. Instead though they had to continue investing in things and taking risks. Greed i suppose.
Some wonderful cuntish touches in that article. thanks for posting it up Art.
That’s fair enough SS and I often think the same. But in the current climate leaving the money in the bank involves considerable risk taking and requires having balls of steel
Indeed, I know a guy who is buying actual gold these days, that’s his wealth management strategy, I mean the kunts buy you the bars and keep it for you in a vault and you get a little cert saying you own five bars or whatever. I say to this guy, surely that’s no better than them holding your cash? If they go ‘tits suas’ your gold will be gone just the same surely?
Yeah but you could buy government bonds or whatever and even a diversified share portfolio would be low risk. They gambled their fortune to make more and paid the price.
I keep all my money in Bearer Bonds
Did you not watch Eddie Hobbs the other night? Gold is king apparently.
Eddie knows everything.
The uber cunt that he is.
Hiya Eddie, you hypocritical cunt.