A Day In The Life: Shines Seafood's Ciara Shine,

Share a day in the life of the marketing and accounts manager of Killybegs-based family firm Shines Seafood, Ciara Shine.

“My dad was a fisherman for around 25 years,” Ciara Shine, marketing and accounts manager of Shines Seafoods, told Fishing News. “When he met my mum, she was working for a Spanish fish-buying company that was sourcing fish from Killybegs and shipping it to Spain.

“They met, fell in love, had a family and stayed in the industry. Dad then opened a fish and chip shop in Killybegs – which we ran as a family for about 21 years.”

That proved instrumental not only in shaping Ciara’s career in the seafood industry, but also in the direction the business would ultimately take. “When my mum was working for the Spanish company, she became really good friends with her boss. His mother would send us over jars of tuna in olive oil. As children, me and my two sisters would fight over these jars.

“After leaving school, I went to college in Sligo to study business and marketing, but continued to work in the shop at weekends. I remember coming home from there one night, and I opened the cupboard and there was just a regular can of tuna in there. I thought, where did we used to get that tuna from, which we fought over as kids – why can we not get that here?

“Dad rang a contact in Spain – and he roared with laughter. He told my dad that the Spanish boats catch albacore tuna every year off the Irish coast – and we don’t know anything about it.”

The conversation led to the Killybegs-based company’s first and now flagship product – Wild Irish Tuna. Ten years on, the product range includes more than 25 lines and features a variety of canned and jarred albacore and yellowfin tuna, along with Irish sardines and mackerel. Recently, the business also launched a selection of pâtés, featuring lobster, anchovy, salmon and tuna.

Ciara with her father John Shine, the founder of Shines Seafood. Mum Marianne is also involved in the business. “We’ve always worked really well together. The seafood industry is at the core of the family. My dad started fishing at 14 off small piers in and around Dublin, and then fishing brought him and my mum together – and it’s kept me in the business, and in Killybegs.”

As marketing and accounts manager of the business – and with a young family to look after – Ciara’s day gets off to a busy start.

“I have two daughters, aged seven and four, so my typical day starts whenever they charge into the bedroom – which tends to be between 7am and 7.30am. If it’s 7.30am, then we’re already running late!

“I’ll drop the kids to school for around 9am, and get to Killybegs for 10am. Myself, Mum and Dad run the business, and we’ll start the day with a tea or coffee and have a bit of a catch-up.

“Then it’s straight into emails. I take the immediate emails as my priority. Anything I can respond to straight away, I will. That’s something we pride ourselves on – if there’s something quick and simple to get back to, then we will.

“On a Monday, we’ll see what orders we’ve had in from the website over the weekend. We’ll process those, and then have a discussion about whether we’re going to do any promotions on the website, and what deliveries we have for the week ahead. Sometimes, along with our big distributor orders, we also receive orders from smaller distributors – they might take one mixed pallet every week. We’ll make sure we have enough stock, and then get it packed and dispatched.”

Ciara’s role also sees her take on a host of other duties, from looking after the accounts to product development. She is also heavily involved with the visual appearance and messaging of the brand.

“This week, I’ve been liaising a lot with my photographer in Wexford. We arrange hampers as well, so we’ve been getting those photographed, and the brochures made up. We also sell on Amazon UK, and they love having loads of photographs on their listings to help promote them – so I’m trying to get new photographs lined up for that as well. I’m also trying to get our new pâté range listed on Amazon before Christmas.”

The creative element also extends to social media, with Ciara very much the face of the business’ online activity – the aim being to use video to help educate and inform the audience.

Social media is an important part of Ciara’s role, and enables the business to showcase the quality, and importance, of locally caught seafood. “The philosophy of educating the consumer is the backbone of the entire business. Dad always says that some people in Ireland know more about the Kardashians than they do about the fish that we have in the coastline around us – for an island nation, that’s a disgrace.”

“We want people to understand why our product is good quality, taste it, and understand the difference in price and quality, and how they’re linked.

“I have an outsourced content-posting team for our social media, and they post for us four to five times a week. If they don’t have anything directly from me, they’ll pick something out of a library of assets that we have developed previously.

“When I have new content – for example, if I’m running a promotion – I’ll design the artwork for that and send it to the team and tell them which day it’s running. I’ll also send that promotion to our email subscriber list.

“As for the videos I make – I had a friend of mine take the mickey out of me, saying that all I do is make videos all day. If they take me longer than five minutes to make, then I’ll move on to the next one.

“They might look like they’ve taken me a while, but trust me – I don’t have that sort of time!”

More information is available here.

This story was taken from the latest issue of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.50 here.

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