Danielle Ryan lends more to her firm Roads Luxury

Entrepreneur Danielle Ryan and her husband, Richard Bourke, ploughed €1.3m in loans into their Roads Luxury lifestyle brand group last year.

The additional funds bring to €2.37m the amount that Ms Ryan and Mr Bourke, a lawyer, have advanced in loans to the group, which is made up of three separate companies specialising in fragrance, entertainment, and publishing.

The businesses were only established in 2013 and the three firms continued in their start-up phase last year, a stage at which losses are usually anticipated.

Newly filed accounts by Roads Luxury Group Ltd show that all three subsidiaries continued to incur losses in 2014.

Roads Fragrance Ltd incurred losses of €517,785 last year, Roads Publishing Ltd recorded losses of €159,695, and Roads Entertainment Ltd recorded losses of €140,410.

Chief executive of Roads, Ms Ryan, is granddaughter of Ryanair founder Tony Ryan.

She trained to act at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and in Roads’ company return, she states her occupation as ‘actor’.

The three companies’ current offerings includes a range of niche eau de parfums, high-end books specialising in art, photography, and culture, and a film production company with projects covering a variety of genres.

Roads’ fragrance have proved a big success, retailing in Selfridges in the UK and Barneys in the US.

The scents are also on sale in the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, Morocco and Russia.

The turnover of the fragrance division in its first year has been estimated at €2m.

On the Roads website, Ms Ryan states: “There are many reasons why I wanted to create Roads but, above all else, I wanted to create an artistic brand that would not be limited by its own definition, or confined to only one idea.”

Roads Entertainment has been busy developing projects as diverse as Trade, by Adam & Paul and Garage writer Mark O’Halloran and Being AP, the feature about the career of legendary jockey AP McCoy.

The three firms had combined shareholders’ deficit of €1.86m made up of a shareholders’ deficit of €1.22m at Roads Fragrance, a deficit of €386,427 at Roads Publishing, and a deficit of €248,305 at Roads Entertainment.

Ms Ryan took no pay from Roads Luxury Group last year.

The 32-year-old has based the business in Dublin and the combined losses from the three Roads subsidiaries in 2014 amount to €817,890.