Connolly's on shortlist of top retailer awards

One of Cavan Town's favourite shops is on the shortlist for the Retail Excellence Awards 2025

CONNOLLY BROTHERS, the Cavan town mainstay for over 100 years, has made it onto a shortlist of the top 20 independent stores in Ireland.

The family-run shop on 1 Main Street, Cavan is entered into the Elavon Retail Excellence Awards 2025 and now find themselves in alongside 19 other competitors selected from towns and counties across the country for their excellence in service and retail offering.

Founded in 1923, Connolly Brothers is something of a landmark in Cavan Town, and is run today by the third generation of the family by the husband and wife team of Paul and Fiona Connolly.

When Paul’s grandfather originally set up shop, he was seling hardware, floor lining, washboards, bicycle tubes and even, bullrings and cattle herd tags.

Paul’s father and uncle then operated through the recession of the 1950s, the onset of the Troubles across the border and other challenges by diversifying and moving with the times to sell a large stock of toys and nursery equipment.

“They ran a popular Christmas club and were the first in Cavan to have Santa income to the store,” Paul told the Celt when we chatted the current owners about their awards nomination.

Today, Fiona and Paul have continued to move with modern customer needs and now stock a beautiful range of quality toys and gifts.

With an emphasis on toys and games that “bring families together” and encourage creativity in children, Fiona and Paul tend to not stock electronic games and tech.

They also focus on locally-made items like foodstuffs from the Created in Cavan range, crafts and giftware.

Their customer service also includes promoting the town and county of Cavan at every opportunity.

“It’s not always about the baseline, it’s about the whole county,” Fiona said, “We keep tourist leaflets in the shop, ask people if they’re local or where they have come from, direct them to other businesses and tourist attractions in the area.

“We look at the big picture and try to showcase Cavan and say, its award-winning restaurants and all the amenities we have here.”

Someone who knows Connolly Brothers and Paul and Fiona’s ethic, customer service and retail offering suggested they should enter in this year’s Retail Excellence Ireland Awards.

After entering their submission, the next stage was for the awards organisers to dispatch a mystery shopper to Main Street and the next thing Fiona and Paul knew, they were included in the list if the country’s top 20 independent retailers.

The last stage in the process before the winners are announced at a glitzy event on the Lyrath Estate Hotel in Co Kilkenny on November 15, is to undergo an interview and inspection by judges.

According to the Elavon Retail Excellence Ireland Awards website the competition “celebrate the retailers who lead by example – those delivering innovation, customer experience, and performance at the highest level.”

During the next round of the competition, Connolly Brothers will be judged on their customer service, displays, merchandising and things like the fluency of their displays, lighting and general aesthetics.

Paul says they are delighted to be the only Cavan representatives on this year’s shortlist and said: “even getting this far has been great”.

Fiona says to win would be the “icing on the cake for a business which has been around for so long”.

Both say they haven’t checked out the competition yet but are willing to “give it a whack and do the county proud!”