‘Wallpaper King’ is hanging in there

PAUL Kiely’s story is sure to resonate with many. He left Ireland for Australia to escape the recession at the turn of the last decade and had just landed back home with his wife and family when the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

He even had a new business idea ready to go – until the lockdown put so many people’s plans on hold.

However, the Government’s Back For Business programme, along with DMG’s Shop Ireland campaign, has given him hope of finally launching his decorating website, the Wallpaper King, at the end of this month.

While in Australia, he set up his own successful interior design business. He took on major commercial space projects requiring large wallpaper installations – including in care facilities, hotels, offices, shops and trendy corner cafés.

‘I still find myself thinking about what I have left behind to start again at the bottom, after ten years away,’ Paul told the Irish Daily Mail. ‘This has been compounded by the current Covid-19 situation. We arrived back in Ireland in mid-January, just as the situation was unfolding and Veronica [his wife] started work on February 1, with the office then being closed on March 12. I was hoping to be trading by the end of March.

‘Within two days of our arrival, and on the day before applications closed, I found out about the Back For Business programme and just made the deadline to get accepted.’

The programme is aimed at helping

returning expats with their businesses. Paul adds: ‘In a similar fashion, I was browsing the news and saw the story about this DMG Shop Ireland campaign – my heart started racing and I jumped on it straight away... I couldn’t believe it when I got accepted.’ With the help of these initiatives, Paul is now pushing ahead to be future-proofed post lockdown.

Plans: Paul and, right, the art project THIS is one of the ‘more unusual assignments’ that came Paul Kiely’s way when working in Australia. ‘I was contacted for a job for an art gallery in Perth – for a French artist, Christophe Canato,’ he explains. ‘The pictures were quite strange, quite striking. He had an exhibition going in this gallery and got this piece printed into a mural. Engaged me to hang it on the wall, like a wallpaper print.’