Ambitious bathroom firm recruits specialist trades in Cork drive

Search for 50 bathroom fitters, plumbers and other trades already underway as Kerry company unveils its nationwide goals 

Alan O’Sullivan of Bathrooms4U, the bathroom installer who is recruiting across a range of trades for the company's operations in Tralee and Ballincollig.

Soaring demand for tailored bathroom fitting services has seen Bathrooms4U launch a drive to recruit up to 50 new staff by the end of 2024.

“We are growing rapidly in Cork. If I could find 20 tilers and 20 plumbers in Cork with the right skills and experience, I’d hire them instantly,” said Alan O’Sullivan of Bathrooms4U, the Tralee and Ballincollig-based one-stop shop for bathroom refurbishment.

“We will also have ten or more new retail, project managers and admin roles in our Ballincollig store. Our aim is to expand into East Cork and, hopefully in time, into Kilkenny and on from there. I could see this growing into a company that employs 500 people in due course.

“Most immediately, Cork is a huge market for us, but we know it is a challenge to find the right talented professionals, people with the technical skills to do the job correctly while also being polite and realising that this is someone’s home so they need to leave it in perfect condition.” 

 Founded just two years ago in Tralee, Bathrooms4U has already experienced phenomenal growth, with huge demand for residential bathrooms of all sorts, notably bespoke mobility bathrooms for people with special needs.

Alan, who has 25 years of plumbing experience, has been working with business partner Seamus Scanlon for the past ten years. Seamus, an All-Ireland medal winner and All-Star award winner with the Kerry football team, leads the Bathrooms4U team of tilers, fitters, carpenters and plumbers.

Bathrooms4U has grown to 60 core staff based in its two Kerry and Cork stores and warehouses, where it assembles tailored bathrooms to pre-measured specs, loads each customer’s order onto a palette and delivers it to their door.

The team is currently prepping and fitting at least 18 residential bathrooms per week. Between them, the teams take five days to fit a bathroom. Each team is effectively two or three people in a van. Days 1 and 2 are the fist-fix team; days 3 and 4 are the tiling team; day 5 is the finishing and cleaning team, who get the customer’s sign-off and exit leaving a spotless home behind them.

“It’s about the whole house, not just the bathroom. I have always treated every customer’s house like it was my own,” said Alan. “You have to leave the house the way you found it. What we do follows a tightly orchestrated procedure.” 

 Tracking each project on a Microsoft project management package and via HubSpot, project managers oversee their business flow, inter-company communications and calendars. These experienced professionals also quality control each project.

Bathrooms4U recently was recently named on The Sunday Times list of ‘Best Places to Work’, one of 35 employers across Ireland awarded for recruiting and retaining top talent along with industry-leading best practices in areas such as engagement, wellbeing and job satisfaction.

“We try to support our staff across all their needs, including their work-life balance,” said Alan. “We pay competitive rates, bound by the Construction Industry Federation. We pay a bonus for finishing on time. The model we are working with is built to attract and retain quality people. We want to get a smooth flow from the retail side to the fitting and the sale.

“That is the backbone of the company, and adhering to that is very important to the company. It’s a challenge, but we prefer the full-time route, getting the right people onto our staff and into our teams.

“We also host apprenticeships. Each summer, we take on four or five young people, some of whom will go on to be apprentices with us.”

 From January to March, the core staff will be supplemented by at least 20 experienced contractors, who sign up to six-week and eight-week contracts to deliver retail, hotel and other bigger commercial projects.

Previous commercial clients include Inchydoney Hotel and Eccles Hotel & Spa in West Cork, Bloomfield Hotel in Mullingar, and the Inn at Dromoland Castle in Clare.

While outside contractors are slow to sign up to smaller jobs, they are ready to block off set weeks and months in their calendars for these bigger projects.

“Myself and Seamus are in the bathroom business for ten years,” said Alan. “There was a time when we would take on sub-contractors, but we have stepped back from that. Every bathroom we do leads to us being recommended for other jobs. We need our reputation to be perfect.” 

 Alan O'Sullivan knows all about commitment to his trade. He left school at 13 to follow in his father's footsteps as a plumber. His father was also very much a perfectionist; from day one, Alan loved learning the skills of the trade.

He qualified as a plumber at 19. By the age of 22, he was running his own plumbing business. These early years were boom years for Alan, who was plumbing and fitting hundreds of bathrooms and toilets for housing estates, apartment complexes and property developments.

Then out of the blue, the banking crisis led to a nationwide recession across construction and plumbers were among those being laid off within the sector.

Alan's neighbour in Tralee asked him to refit a bathroom for her. He did the entire job — from plumbing, tiling, carpentry and fitting. It looked great, so another neighbour asked, then another and another.

Within the space of six months, Alan had fitted ten bathrooms and he knew there was a business model for success here.

The recession not only gave Alan his new business model, the layoffs within construction also gave him access to a pool of skilled labour. Overnight his business had tilers, plumbers, carpenters, fitters all ready and willing to work.

Out of this, Bathrooms4U was born. Instead of having to organise plumbing, tiling and carpenters, Bathrooms4U was functioning as a one-stop shop.

Just two years on, the company is actively recruiting for up to 50 new roles in its retail and warehouse spaces in Ballincollig in Cork and Manor West in Kerry, with plans for further developments in East Cork and beyond.

“Our recruitment drive in Cork is up and running. Cork is a great market and we’re very confident in the quality of service will enjoy great success here,” concluded Alan O’Sullivan.