Louth-based Edward McCloskey founded a company called Irish Breeze in 1993, which produced cotton wool, soaps and skincare products.
Sixteen years later, after spending many years researching a gentler, chemicals-free alternative to conventional baby wipes, he launched WaterWipes.
Its products are on sale in 50 countries, and it is the number three brand in North America, the number two on Amazon globally and the brand leader in the UK.
Three million packs a week are manufactured in two cleanroom production sites in Drogheda. It has employees in Europe, the US and Australia as well as nearly 400 employees in Ireland.
RM Block
What light-bulb moment prompted you to start-up in business?
I was lucky enough to have a very entrepreneurial father. Watching and listening to my Dad [Malachy] discussing the start of businesses, around our kitchen table, was very formative and meant a light-bulb moment wasn’t so critical.
For my own business, a realisation that, all around the world, parents are advised by health professionals not to use conventional chemicals-based baby wipes because of their adverse health impacts and to use just water with cotton wool or cloths instead. But the advice was being mostly ignored because of the huge convenience of baby wipe packs. There had to be a market opportunity there.
Why is Ireland not considered a truly rich country?
What was your back-to-the-wall moment and how did you overcome it?
My worst “back to the wall” moment was coincidentally the year that our first packs of WaterWipes were made. At the time, our core cotton-wool business came under intolerable stress due to wild increases in the global price of cotton, costs we struggled to recover from our retailer customers. The business was lucky to survive that period of turmoil and losses.
What moment/deal would you cite as the game-changer or turning point for the company?
One of them was during the early months of Covid in 2020 when some of our competitors in the US market had difficulty in supplying Walmart, Target, Walgreens, Amazon and other customers. Our superb manufacturing and logistics teams were able to maintain uninterrupted supply to those and many other customers, resulting in a surge in sales and profits.
To what extent does your business trade internationally?
Although WaterWipes is brand leader in Ireland, the vast majority of our sales are international, across about 50 countries around the globe.
Describe your growth funding path.
Our growth has been predominantly internally funded. A policy of no dividends or shareholder liquidity has, over many years, been useful in building capital.
Irish Breeze [the precursor to WaterWipes] did avail of EIIS [Employment Investment Incentive] funding in the past. A liquidity event in late 2024 introduced the business’s first external shareholder, helping to continue the growth journey.
How will your market look in three years and where would you like your business to be?
We are on track for WaterWipes to become a billion-dollar brand at retail sales over the next five years, which is hugely exciting. Hardly any Irish consumer brands attain that milestone.
Our market will continue to grow, driven by awareness of the skincare benefits compared to other brands. And there are lots of other applications for our WaterWipes technology beyond our current core market of babies and newborns.
What are you doing to disrupt, innovate and improve your products?
We are constantly focused on innovating and improving the products we offer our consumers. We have cross-functional teams, facilitated by consumer and market research of numerous forms, to develop and launch our products for the years ahead.
How are you deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in your business and what impact has it had on your performance?
We are beginning to use AI in some of our internal planning, forecasting and business management. Still early days.
What is the most common mistake you see entrepreneurs make?
A mistake that some entrepreneurs make, in their early days, is not appreciating the value of committing to a detailed business plan and also not appreciating the importance of robust financial and especially cash-flow planning.
What piece of advice would you offer to a young entrepreneur?
Spend time and effort truly and exhaustively working out what you want and what you don’t want.
Only when that exercise has been completed over time should you then focus on how you’re going to get it, who will help you get there, when things need to happen etc. The clarity, focus and energy to be harnessed by following this methodology should not be underestimated in my opinion.
