WEALTH September 28, 2025 0 Comments

How Kieran Walsh’s Hidden Entrepreneurial DNA Transformed His Career into a Stunning Success Story You Can’t Afford to Ignore

Ever wonder what it really takes to catch the entrepreneurial bug early and turn that spark into a blazing empire? Kieran Walsh, a bona fide hustler from Cork, didn’t just catch it—he inherited it straight from his dad’s grind. Growing up surrounded by family businesses, young Kieran wasn’t just watching the wheel turn; he was already figuring out how to spin it faster. From fiddling with websites in the dawn of the internet era—way before tools like Shopify or Stripe made life easier—to breaking into the beauty biz with nothing but guts and a metal briefcase full of nail polish, his story is anything but ordinary. And when you mix a casual Sunday chat with Vogue Williams and an earful about the woes of fake tan—it’s no surprise that the Bare by Vogue brand soared into a multimillion-euro sensation. This isn’t just a tale about beauty products blowing up on shelves; it’s a hard-earned journey of relentless grit, smart pivots and playing the long game. Curious to learn how a guy from Cork turned “no experience” into nearly €17 million in turnover? You’re in the right place. LEARN MORE

Kieran Walsh learned how to hustle from an early age, having caught the business bug from his father. The Cork entrepreneur has built up a stable of big-money beauty brands, the most notable of which is the Bare by Vogue range. He talks to Niamh Walsh about his rise from creating websites to developing household-name products

Kieran Walsh was born with the entrepreneurial gene. His driving ambition for success was formed at an early age as he watched his father build a business from the ground up.

Walsh, who is from Cork and has amassed millions distributing beauty products to retail stores across Ireland, tells BusinessPlus.ie he grew up around two family businesses.

“My dad is also in distribution, but for engineering. So he does everything from welding to abrasive and all that kind of stuff. It’s quite a big business. I think he’d be the main player in the country,” he says.

Walsh says his father was often busy with work during his childhood, but he doesn’t harbour any regrets.

He has the utmost admiration for the man’s dedication to both his business and his family.

“I remember growing up and my dad not being around very much,” he recalls.

“I think that he started to get better and better as we got older. And I suppose my brother or sister came [along] later and saw the benefits of this in the latter years.”

While it would have been easy for Walsh to take a well-trodden path and follow his father into an established firm, he was determined to strike out on his own.

“I was always quite entrepreneurial. Even when I was a kid, I was always buying and selling stuff and trying to make a buck,” he says.

After finishing school in Bruce College, Walsh enrolled at University College Cork and studied business. It was during this period that his entrepreneurial flair began to grow.

“Back in 2003 or 2004 when the internet was in its early years, I was really into building websites. It was hard back then. There was no Stripe, there was no Shopify. I would register domains and build websites around them and then find a supply chain of products. One of my first businesses was a website called Dog Collar. I sold that as a going concern.”

It was in the fledgling era of what is now a multi-billion-dollar beauty industry that Walsh eyed up his future fortune.

In 2011, he and his business partner Will McCreevy founded National Beauty Distribution, a distributor and co-creator of international brands such as Bare by Vogue Williams.

Its latest accounts for the financial year 2023 show it had a turnover of €16.6m and operating profits of €1.9m.

“The whole influencer thing had just kind of begun. There was no Instagram, it was just Facebook. And I just had an inkling that this was going to be a big medium,” Walsh says.

“So I started talking to brands. And of course, nobody took me seriously because I had no experience whatsoever. I decided I needed a different medium and set up a website called Beauty Matters, which I subsequently sold as well.

“Beauty Matters lent me legitimacy in the beauty marketplace. I could point to the website and say: ‘Hey, I own this site. I want to sell your products here.’ And then I could start a conversation with them.

“I already had warehousing, so I had an idea to be a distributor. I found this nail polish brand called Butter London and that was the genesis of it.

“I remember going in and out to the likes of hair salons [such as] Dylan Bradshaw and Paul Hession in Dublin. I had this little metal briefcase with bottles and bottles of nail polish.

“I was so naive. I thought that the salon did nails, did hair, did everything. And of course, I didn’t know at the time that hair salons did hair, nail salons did nails and skin clinics did skin.

“So I remember being in Dylan Bradshaw’s and saying to him, ‘Do you all sell the same stuff?’ I had noticed every single salon I was in and out of were selling the same brand of hair products. And Dylan said, ‘Look, that’s what L’Oreal sells, and that’s what we all sell.’”

Walsh hit on an idea to expand the beauty market here.

He found a small brand based in Australia and tracked down the distributor for Ireland and the UK.

“He was also a shareholder of the brand. So he said to me, ‘Nobody is really stocking this.’ I flew into Stockholm to meet them. They had an event over there.

“It was 5am in the hotel’s residents bar and we were all having a great time. Pete, the guy who was the brand, said ‘You’re the guy for me.’”

He took over the brand’s Irish operation and within five years it was selling €2m annually. Walsh’s big success came when he expanded into the lucrative fake tan market.

“Vogue Williams and I knew each other for years from press stuff,” he says.

“And we kind of had this casual friendship where we would chat about different things in the industry.

“I had been thinking about the tan category myself for a long time. I always thought that it [was] kind of broken.

“I owned an apartment and I was renting it out at the time to two women. I used to listen to them talking about tan, how it stank and destroyed bed sheets. That just got me thinking about those two main problems with tan.”

The idea for Bare by Vogue came following a chat with Williams on a Sunday evening.

“I just messaged her on Instagram and said, ‘We’re talking about doing a tan.’ She rang me and said, ‘This is so weird. I was going to the office tomorrow to sign a contract for a two-year deal with a tan brand.’

“So I said, ‘Don’t do anything. I’ll be over on Tuesday.’ I flew over and we agreed a deal that day.”

Bare by Vogue is now one of the biggest-selling tan brands in Ireland and the UK, netting millions for the business-minded pair.

Walsh has also collaborated with his former school friend and fellow Corkonian, Lisa Jordan.

“I had been talking about doing makeup back as far as 2015,” he says.

“So in 2017 we finally came to the market with the Luna by Lisa brand, and launched four lip glosses.”

Luna by Lisa has grown exponentially since then and the beauty range is now a multi-million euro earner for Walsh and Jordan.

Kieran Walsh was born with the entrepreneurial gene.

As well as expanding his beauty empire, Walsh is studying. He has just completed his first module at the prestigious Harvard Business School.

In 2021, Walsh bought his former business partner out of the company. He says the move was amicable.

“Will had just decided that the time was right. He had three young kids, and he wanted to spend more time with them. So we came to a deal,” Walsh says.

“But it’s not been without its challenges. I’m repaying a very significant amount of money every month. I am kind of coming to the end of that now and starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”