John Croughan to retire after 42 years in the local retail trade

"You have to be a certain kind of person to get into this game, because it takes your life. Your life becomes the shop," says John Croughan.

"There's no question about it. If you don't give it that sort of commitment, you won't survive."

John has been involved in the retail trade on Athlone's Castlemaine Street - a stone's throw from where he grew up in St Patrick's Terrace - for the last 42 years.

This chapter in the business life of the town is now drawing to a close, as he is preparing to retire from running his well-known Croughan's Centra convenience store in the coming weeks.

Looking back on his journey in retail over the four decades, he says long hours and hard work were two constants, but he wouldn't change it if he could.

"You don't feel the years tipping by. The years just fly by, but that's life," he says. "I've enjoyed every single bit of it, and I'm still enjoying it to this day.

"I am a people person and I just loved the business. I've always loved the people and the characters, and we had huge support from the people of Athlone.

"I hate packing it up, but my health is coming against me so I don't have any choice. I had open heart surgery ten years ago, and at 63 the last thing I should be doing is working seven days of 14 or 15 hours at a time."

The store is set to continue trading under new management when John finishes up, which will most likely be in mid to late August.

Given his longevity in retail, you would be forgiven for assuming that John came from a business-oriented family, but that wasn't the case. His father was a train driver and his mother was a dressmaker.

He studied business and accountancy in what was then Athlone Regional Technical College and was working part-time in The Shack pub on the Dublin Road when a co-worker there at the time, Kieran Hannon, told him about an opportunity to go into partnership together by buying the leasehold on what had been Fletcher's shop on Castlemaine Street.

Their shop began trading as 'Castlemaine Stores' in June of 1978, and changed its name to H.C. Value inside the first year.

"The shop was basically a small local shop with a newsagent's," he recalls. "I was 21 years of age on April 1, I opened here that June, and we officially opened the shop in July. I was only a gosson!

"Things were very bad in the country at that time. Interest rates were crazy. Money was tight. Anyone who had a job was doing well. But I had no fear at that time. I was young, and I was aggressive and keen."

John subsequently bought Kieran Hannon's share of the leasehold on the shop.

He married Mary Croughan, and over the years they have been involved in a number of retail developments, buying and redeveloping numbers 8 and 9 Castlemaine Street (the current Centra site) as well as numbers 4 and 5 on the street, which previously operated as a standalone off-licence premises.

"Myself and Mary just kept developing the business and kept improving what we were doing. We were always watching for what the next thing would be," he says.

"We put in a red meat counter with two skilful and well-known butchers, the late Joe Scally and Tommy Dunning. I then went and set up a bakery in the shop."

The Croughans traded as Spar and SuperValu on Castlemaine Street, before the store became Centra about ten years ago. One of the traits which set the business apart in the 80s and 90s was its opening hours, at a time when supermarkets would generally close in the early evening and would not open on a Sunday or a bank holiday.

"That's how I built the business - I did everything (the larger supermarkets) didn't do. Then the powers-that-be in those companies decided that they were losing out, and they changed their tactics.

"They went with the long hours, and being open seven days a week. For years I had it completely to myself, because they didn't see me as a threat."

John said there were times the store was so busy that it began to cause headaches for the authorities.

"I remember a Garda Sergeant coming to me one Sunday morning and saying, 'John, we're going to have to do something about down here. This is crazy, the traffic! It's absolute madness – the street is double-parked, treble-parked!' At that time people would come out of Mass and (the street would be thronged).

"We developed the off-licence and at Christmas you'd have to queue outside for maybe 15-20 minutes to get in. That's how busy it was," he says.

"Whatever the new trend was, we moved with it. The business ran ahead of us and we ran after it."

One of the Croughans' deals involved a €1.2 million purchase of a SuperValu store in Ballinasloe, which they sold after trading successfully for a number of years. Mary Croughan's SuperValu store was later developed on the Ballymahon Road, Athlone, opening in September 2015.

A less pleasant aspect of his time in business has been occasional experiences of crime in the store. One late-night break-in resulted in the perpetrators, a group from Dublin which had arrived in a van, being chased at high speed across the town by Gardai. The raiders drove the wrong way up Pearse Street before they were ultimately apprehended.

"I've seen every type of scam. That's part of the business. It's a terrible part of it, but it's part of it. Nothing would surprise me," he says.

In recent months, amid the pandemic, the Centra store has done well. "People reverted back here because it's a smaller shop, they could get in and get out."

He says his staff played a massive role in the success of the business through the years. "You wouldn't be able to do what we did without having great staff. If I'm driving (the business) the staff have to buy into it as well."

Outside of his work, John has a longstanding interest in football, and he was involved in Athlone Town FC for many years. He and Mary have two sons and a daughter, Sean, Aishling and Kevin, but they decided not to pursue a career in retail.

Sean is a senior A&E doctor in Dublin and is training to become a consultant, Aishling works for a high-end packaging company whose head office is in Hong Kong, and Kevin is in university and is studying sports, fitness and nutrition.

As for his retirement, John has no firm plans at this stage.

"My health is the first thing (to look after) and we'll see what happens after that. I just can't put myself at the high-octane end of the business anymore. It's too much pressure.

"But it was a fantastic trip. I really will miss it. I'll miss the people and the buzz," he concludes.