Raking in the green at Irish shop

By Don Shilling

The shop stays busy even after St. Patrick’s Day.

BOARDMAN — Colleen Cecil couldn’t celebrate March 17 without wearing green, attending a parade and shopping at House of Erin.

“I come here relatively often but always before St. Patrick’s Day,” said the 44-year-old Canfield resident, who visited the store at 5136 Southern Blvd. last week.

She was looking for inexpensive trinkets to pass out to children at today’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boardman. She is part of a group of 25 friends who attend the parade every year.

“My grandpa owned an Irish pub” in Milwaukee, she said. “This is our holiday.”

It’s no surprise that this is the busiest time of the year at House of Erin, a small store dedicated to all things Irish. Store owner Dick Coughlin notches about one-third of his annual sales in the first 17 days of March.

This time of year, the top sellers are shirts, sweatshirts and hats.

But House of Erin is much more than a St. Patrick’s Day store.

A stand with plastic trinkets, shamrock sunglasses and green hair will be taken down this week and replaced with a spring line — flower vases and outdoor items decorated with shamrocks.

“People often ask me what I do the rest of the year,” Coughlin said. “We stay busy. There’s Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day.”

Outside of the St. Patrick’s Day season, Irish jewelry is the store’s No. 1 seller.

The most popular designs are the Celtic knot and the claddagh, a traditional Irish friendship ring featuring hands, heart and a crown.

The No. 2 seller is a line of Belleek china that comes from a village in Ireland by that name. Included are vases, decorative plates and picture frames.

The jewelry, china, sweatshirts, Notre Dame apparel, Irish flags and green sunglasses are all tightly packed into a 1,000-square-foot space.

“I could use a bigger store,” Coughlin said, adding that he has no plans to move.

House of Erin is part business, part hobby for the 77-year-old shopkeeper. The store makes enough money to employ six part-time clerks and produce small profits for Coughlin.

“I’m not getting rich,” said Coughlin, who has a pension from working 32 years as a mail carrier in Boardman.

Mostly, the store is a way for Coughlin to keep busy and enjoy his retirement by building relationships.

“I’ve met a lot of wonderful customers,” he said.

The store was created almost by chance. He and his late wife, Cathy, who was known as Shorty, were shopping at an Irish store in Cleveland in 1991 when the owner mentioned that he wanted to open a mall kiosk in the Youngstown area for the Christmas season.

Coughlin, whose father’s parents came from Ireland, and his wife thought they could make it work. Coughlin retired from the Postal Service with a buyout, attended a trade show in Chicago and spent his buyout payment on merchandise for the new business.

He found that making buying decisions that first year was difficult.

“You really don’t know. It’s a guessing game,” he said.

He guessed well, however. He sold enough merchandise at his kiosk at the Southern Park Mall that he came back for three more years and also sold items from his home.

In 1995, he started leasing store space.

He chose the store name because Erin is used as a poetic name for Ireland. It is a derivative of the Irish word for Ireland.

To pack his store, he attends a large trade show every April in New Jersey, where he buys about half of the merchandise he sells in a year.

“This is amazing,” he said. “When my wife and I used to go shopping, all I did was push the buggy. I was a complete nonshopper. Now, I’ve had to become a shopper.”

He patrols the aisles that house more than 100 vendors and finds a lot that he likes.

“By the time I get to the end, I’m out of money,” he said.

Coughlin admits he’s been hurt a bit by a slowing economy and the growth of Internet sales, but those factors haven’t dampened his enthusiasm.

When asked how long he plans to keep operating the store, he draws a question mark in the air and laughs.

“They’ll probably have to carry me out of this place on a stretcher,” he said.

shilling@vindy.com