Building
Products
Following our conversation with Declan, we sat down with Paul O’Connor, Warehouse Operator, who has been an essential part of the Laydex team for 15 years. Paul has witnessed, and helped shape the transformation of the warehouse to a structured, fast-paced logistics hub.
The scale of the company is by far the biggest transformation I’ve seen. When I started, it was just me in the warehouse: one person handling everything from unloading to wrapping pallets and organizing stock. There was no wrapping machine back then, we used to wrap every single pallet by hand, turning it around on a block. It was tough, but that’s just how things were done.
And now we’ve got a full warehouse team, six of us, proper equipment, systems in place, and a huge product range that didn’t exist back then. And it’s also how we work—more efficient, more structured, and better equipped to handle the volume we deal with today.
When the Fortessa handles first arrived, it was completely new territory for us—we were starting from zero, which meant we had the chance to build things our own way. I really enjoyed that process. And now, looking at how far the Fortessa brand has come, especially after the Prestige launch and the Lifestyle rebrand, it’s something I feel genuinely proud of. Seeing those handles displays and knowing the effort that went into getting them there.
The most exciting part is the energy that’s coming in with the new people joining the business. New team members bring something fresh to the table: new ideas, different ways of working, a different perspective. That kind of input can really shake things up for the better.