This article is from page 61 of the 2009-12-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 61 JPG
FOUNDED in the wake of the first ever Lisdoonvarna Festival, the Celt- ic T-Shirt Shop has become an insti- tution in north Clare.
Later this month, the Lahinch shop will celebrate three full decades of making some of the most unique clothes ever produced in the county.
To mark this anniversary, the shop has been hosting a competition to find the best picture of someone wearing A Ora Cem Koroma OPM MESA SCoMUe)e (Cn
“It was just after the first Lisdoon- varna Festival that we started. My husband Mike did all of the posters for the Lisdoonvarna Festivals and
after the first festival we got the idea of making tee-shirts. It was just an experiment to see would they work, because in those days people didn’t buy tee-shirts the way they do now,’ said Lisa O’Connor of the Celtic T- shirt Shop.
‘We did more the next year and they worked well again and then Mike got the idea of putting a Celtic design on the tee-shirts. There was noth- ing like that happening at the time, I think there was one other company making tee-shirts with Leprechauns and silly slogans, which was just for tourists really. So we made up a few tee-shirts and took them around to the shops at the end of the season an
they liked them.”
As the tee-shirts became more pop- ular, Lisa and Mike obtained their current shop, right on the promenade in Lahinch and soon people from all over the world would be wearing their iconic Celtic designs.
“It’s exciting to think that people from all over the globe have been into the shop. Printing cannot be re- produced automatically and I think that is what has kept us apart from the other artificial printers around. It’s great that customers can come in and see the printing being done in the shop. There has been a lot of big changes in the business over the years.
“At the start it was all wholesale to the shops and then we got the shop ourselves. In the last year, business has really changed in Lahinch. There are fewer people around and it is tougher for everyone, So we will have to see what comes in the future.”
There is still time to enter the 30th anniversary photo competition, more details are available from www.celt- ict-shirtshop.com.