A desire to create a business that is rooted in Irish people and culture persuaded experiential marketing expert Rob Walsh to return to Ireland with his business Spud.
During six years in Toronto, Walsh worked at two experiential marketing event agencies where he turned islands off Toronto into French Riviera experiences, curated car launches for Porsche and pop-up shops in Tokyo for South Park.
Walsh is a graduate of the Back for Business programme backed by the Irish Government aimed at supporting returned or soon to be returning Irish emigrants in staring and developing a business in Ireland.
“Ireland’s a very different place to when I left it. It’s multicultural, it’s cool, it’s got everything for everybody. And I love living here”
The free programme, which is funded by the Irish Abroad Unit, Department of Foreign Affairs, was created to foster and support entrepreneurial activity among emigrants recently returned to Ireland.
Now in its ninth year, the programme has up to 50 places available. The deadline for the next phase is 16 January and interested entrepreneurs can apply here.
Back to his roots
Rob Walsh moved from Ireland to Toronto in Canada in 2016 to develop his expertise in working in the world of creating and managing experiential events.
“The aim would be to increase revenues by four times in the next 18 months. I think that’s doable”
He had been working in a similar role in Dublin but wanted to get experience faster in a larger market.
The powerful experiences he gained while working in Canada gave him the inspiration to bring his experience home to Wicklow where he founded Spud, which creates bespoke journeys in Ireland for tourists and corporate groups.
Walsh’s decision to return to Ireland was to be close to family but there was also an underlying entrepreneurial motive. “The longer I was away, the more I knew I wanted to be at home in the long term, but I also knew that at some point I wanted to create a business in Ireland that was rooted to Ireland itself and to the people and its culture,” he says.
The concept is that Spud shows Ireland in a unique way that’s more experiential and more creative and more tied to the interest and the reasons people have in choosing to come to Ireland in the first place.
A different place
Rob says being back in Ireland has been amazing in part because his business is so tied to Ireland itself. “I couldn’t do it anywhere else in the world, but I’m also close to my family and I think Ireland’s a very different place to when I left it. It’s multicultural, it’s cool, it’s got everything for everybody. And I love living here,” he says.
After the initial typical challenges of setting up the business and acquiring clients, Rob has been very pleased with how the business has gone so far. “I don’t feel like I have a job now. I feel like I get to do what I love to do every day, and I can design every day based on how I want to do it,” he says.
He found the Back for Business programme to be a great benefit both for networking and mentorship. “It was also great to have a cohort of people that experienced similar ups and downs in setting up businesses but who also have a unique perspective because of having lived outside of Ireland for a period of time and therefore had to rebuild their networks. I think that was a particularly strong part of it,” he says.
A recent major milestone for Spud was the NFL weekend in Dublin in September when the Pittsburgh Steelers played the Minnesota Vikings in Croke Park.
“We hosted the board of a global fast food company in Ireland for the NFL game for four days and created immersive experiences tied to sport and their business. We also hosted a high-end leisure group for the game. Securing those two pieces of business has been transformational for the business,” he says.
Having recently hired his first employee, an operations manager, Rob plans to grow the team sustainably to another three people by the end of 2026.
“I’d like at least two people servicing clients and I would love to get a sales and marketing person on board as well. The aim would be to increase revenues by four times in the next 18 months. I think that’s doable,” he says.
The deadline for completed applications for Back to Business 9 is midnight on Friday, 16 January. For more information or to register your interest in receiving an application form, click here
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