Griffin, Noel

by Terry Clavin

Griffin, Noel (1926–81), businessman, was born on 23 December 1926 in Upper Leeson Street, Dublin, the eldest son of Joseph Griffin of Sandymount, Dublin, and his wife Maureen (née Nicholson). Joseph Griffin was in the IRA's Dublin Brigade during the war of independence and fought against the Anglo–Irish treaty as part of the Four Courts garrison. After a period running his own accounting practice, his Fianna Fáil connections drew him into the state sector and later service as controller of prices during the Emergency (1939–45). In 1945 he was hired by the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake magnate Joseph McGrath (qv), becoming managing director of McGrath's Irish Glass Bottle Company (IGB).

Raised in Dublin, Noel Griffin attended Willow Park School, Blackrock, and then boarded at Newbridge College, Co. Kildare. He was still some months away from passing his final exams for the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ireland in 1950 when McGrath appointed him company secretary of Waterford Glass. Newly purchased by IGB and McGrath, Waterford Glass had been founded in 1947 by Charles (Karel) Bačík (qv), a Czech entrepreneur seeking to exploit the fame of the original Waterford Glass (1783–1851) among wealthy Irish-Americans.

Chaos prevailed in the primitive glassmaking facility outside Waterford at Ballytruckle as the fifty workers grappled with a hazardous production process. These formative experiences instilled a sense of camaraderie that informed Griffin's unceremonious management style. As McGrath's trusted retainer, Griffin supervised the foreign experts hired to develop the glassmaking capabilities of the new facility constructed nearby at Johnstown in 1951. Touring Europe, he hired skilled workers displaced by war and totalitarianism with a view to training Waterford locals and reviving Ireland's glassmaking tradition. He built on Bačík's earlier initiatives by securing an agreement with the Waterford Central Technical Institute for a glassworkers' pre-apprenticeship course that proved the mainspring of subsequent recruitment.

By 1954 Waterford Glass was reliably producing fine lead crystal, but sensitivities surrounded the sight of Irish apprentices taking orders from foreign masters, and in December 1955 fifty Irish glasscutters struck over the hiring of a German. Griffin sympathised with the strikers' belief that Irish craftsmen were capable of doing as good a job, and he persuaded a sceptical board to phase out almost all foreign employees by 1960. His growing influence was attested by promotions to company director (1952), general manager (1956) and managing director (1960).

The early designs replicated the antique Waterford Glass pieces until Griffin's disheartening promotional tour of North America in 1952 established that heavy ornamental crystals were considered outdated. Resisting pressure from company directors to copy the minimalist patterns of continental glassmakers, he backed the vision of his Czech designer Miroslav Havel (qv), whose compromise between bygone ostentation and modernist functionality adroitly reinterpreted Waterford Glass for contemporary American, though not European, tastes.

After five years of losses and heavy investment from the McGraths, Waterford Glass returned a small profit in 1955, making modest inroads in the USA, where the B. Altman's store in New York city was an invaluable outlet. Lacking in marketing nous, Griffin initially sold through American agents with little appreciation of the product's potential. Sales accelerated once Waterford Glass established its own sales and distribution operation in America in 1958 and hired Altman's chief buyer, John Miller, as its US marketing manager in 1960. Miller's inspired promotional ploys eventually enabled Waterford Glass to capture 93 per cent of the American premium glassware market. Struggling to meet escalating demand, Griffin represented the ensuing scarcity as a mark of quality and sought to maintain a small supply shortfall. He controlled distribution tightly, ensuring that his crystals were stocked in upmarket stores and never retailed at a discount, being priced three times higher than the competition.

Upon replacing his father as IGB chief executive in 1965, Griffin divided his working week between Waterford and Dublin, moving residence after fifteen years in Waterford to Bray, Co. Wicklow, which was more conveniently situated. Paddy McGrath (qv) likewise succeeded his father as head of the McGrath businesses and relied on Griffin, whom he had known since their time together at Willow Park School, to run IGB and Waterford Glass. Whereas the McGraths were staunch Fine Gaelers, Griffin fervently supported Fianna Fáil, sitting on its national executive as a leading fund-raiser. Warned off a political career by his father, he nurtured ambitions of a taoiseach's nomination to the senate, but had to settle for a directorship with the state-run Irish Shipping company.

Griffin oversaw IGB's move to new facilities at Ringsend, Dublin, though its strong growth up to 1970 was comprehensively overshadowed by the performance of Waterford Glass, particularly after opening the world's largest crystal-glassmaking premises at Kilbarry, Waterford, in 1967. Originally intended to be developed over seventeen years, the mainly self-funded expansion of the Kilbarry facility was accomplished by 1972 as revenues and profits grew by nearly 50 per cent a year in the late 1960s. Over 70 per cent of output went to America, with American tourists in Ireland and Britain buying most of the rest, and Kilbarry's American sales outstripped those of every other crystal factory in Europe combined. The only mass manufacturer of handmade crystal, Waterford Glass saw its employment peak at over 3,000 following the completion of additional facilities at Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, in 1972 and at Kilbarry in 1979.

Despite this growth spurt, the dogmatically practical Griffin maintained an underdeveloped administrative structure dominated by his brusque personality. Paid entirely on a piecework and bonus basis, the suitably motivated glassworkers enjoyed great autonomy, and Griffin encouraged a proud craft culture that was integral to the prestige of the finished product. In the 1970s the long production runs of relatively few lines bred boredom and militancy among the increasingly hubristic glassworkers. Griffin eschewed confrontation and bought industrial peace by aggressively pushing up prices from 1974, helped by insatiable US demand and the strong dollar. Glassworkers accordingly earned nearly twice the average manufacturing wage, while also benefiting from tenant-purchase housing schemes, share schemes, mortgage loans, full medical cover, Ireland's first disability and 50 per cent pension schemes, and an elaborate sports complex.

The ownership and management prospered too, especially when IGB's cunningly structured flotation of Waterford Glass on the Irish stock exchange in 1966 concentrated 70 per cent of equity in the hands of the Waterford Glass board, thereby engineering a shortage that boosted the already soaring share price. Griffin subsequently exhibited considerable wealth – presumably attributable to his timely sale of Waterford Glass stock – holding significant minority investments in companies such as Ergas, a profitable seller of bottled gas, and the ailing Arklow Potteries, overseeing its sale to a Japanese company as acting chairman in 1975. He could afford in 1971 to buy one of Ireland's finest period homes, Mount Kennedy House, sited on 224 acres of parkland near Newtownmountkennedy, Co. Wicklow, and to own several racehorses. A keen horseman, he rode with the Bray Hunt and also enjoyed swimming, fishing and shooting, though golf defeated him.

Convinced of the need for diversification, Griffin devised and implemented the much-criticised policy of exploiting Waterford Glass's unsustainably high share rating for corporate acquisitions. The purchases in 1970 of John Aynsley and Sons Ltd, a British manufacturer of fine china, and in 1971 of John Hinde Ltd, a maker of greeting cards, were appropriate, and John Aynsley thrived off Waterford Glass's marketing and distribution network in North America. (Controversially, three Waterford Glass directors, including Griffin, accumulated minority stakes in John Hinde before being generously bought out by Waterford Glass in 1976.) But the costly takeover of the underperforming Switzer's retail group in 1971 was highly questionable, while there was no justification for the 1974 acquisition of the Smith Group, a sprawling motor, light engineering, hardware and house-building conglomerate.

Its dynamic crystal and china divisions lumbered by unprofitable, cash-consuming activities tied into an unsteady Irish economy, the 7,000-worker Waterford Glass Group suffered from a much-diminished share price and lacked a coordinating administrative structure, adding to Griffin's heavy workload. He still managed IGB, which fared dismally from 1970 when rising costs and government price controls prompted the curtailment of its plant modernisation program. Whether attributable to McGrath or Griffin, this decision crippled IGB's prospects and the distracted Griffin resigned as managing director in 1977.

There was also his troubled 'Friday company', the publicly-quoted drapery wholesaler Ferrier Pollock, which he had taken over in 1972 assisted by a £300,000 bank loan as well as his own £64,000 investment and McGrath's £36,000 contribution. Arriving late to a speculative asset bubble, Griffin directed Ferrier Pollock's overspending during 1973–4 on property and an ill-assorted collection of companies engaged in packaging, printing and carpet wholesaling. The ensuing recession forced Griffin into selling many of these assets at a loss and refocusing on the original wholesaling business, for which he bought Switzer's wholesale drapery subsidiary Switzer Todd in 1978. Involving connected companies, the Switzer Todd purchase attracted adverse comment given the steep price paid by Ferrier Pollock.

In 1979 Griffin struck a theoretically clever deal with a property company for developing Ferrier Pollock's valuable headquarters into a shopping centre whereby his financially (and managerially) overstretched company retained half-ownership, but accepted a deferred payment. Before this fell due, a reckless gamble miscarried in 1980 as shipping delays caused a huge consignment of clothes to arrive out of season, forcing the insupportably overstocked Ferrier Pollock into receivership, with shareholders and unsecured creditors losing almost everything. Compounding Griffin's embarrassment, an attempted financial rescue unravelled, though not before McGrath guaranteed, and subsequently paid, debts of £1 million.

At Waterford Glass, Griffin's strategy of expeditiously expanding production with little regard for containing costs had left the company dependent on benign currency movements, while its debts mounted due to underperforming subsidiaries and the refusal of American retailers to continue carrying large volumes of stock. Furthermore, penal income taxes provoked chronic absenteeism, contributing in 1980 to Waterford Glass's first profit setback since 1955. Disenchanted by his workers' behaviour and by the government's harsh tax and monetary policies, Griffin also faced an unsettled ownership situation arising from McGrath's financial difficulties.

Griffin married (1959) Ita Brennan, from Belmont, Co. Galway. They had three sons and two daughters. He became a freeman of Waterford city in November 1980. On 23 July 1981 he attempted to swim a distance well within his capabilities off Dunmore East, Co. Waterford, but floundered in the extremely cold water and drowned before rescuers reached him. His death created a lasting leadership vacuum in Waterford Glass, though it is hard to see how he could have arrested the company's subsequent decline amid adverse fashion developments and the advent of high-quality machine-made crystals. He was buried in St Mary's cemetery, Ballygunner, Co. Waterford, and left an estate worth £1.09 million, not counting the undetermined assets in his family trust.