Kennys.ie, the website of Kennys Bookshop and Art Gallery in Galway, is celebrating 30 years online. Set up in mid-1994, it was Ireland’s first e-commerce website and among the first retail websites in the world.
The idea to put the family business online came at a time when e-commerce was largely unheard of. However, Barry Flanagan, founder of Ireland On-Line, saw Kennys as a business he could showcase.
It sold a product that was easy to transport, had a database behind it and an also had an existing international customer base. Six months later, Ireland’s first retail website was born.
Now the oldest online bookshop in the world, Kennys.ie went live in the summer of 1994, just after the website of a bookshop in California, which has since closed.
Amazon went online a year later. Over their last three decades selling online, Kennys have shipped millions of books to over 150 countries worldwide and their online trade has become the busiest and largest part of their business, which also includes a retail bookshop, an art gallery and a Libraries & Special Collections division.
Run from their Galway city premises, Kennys ship hundreds of book parcels daily with An Post. While specialising in material of Irish interest, they sell everything from new and secondhand books to rare books and archives on all subject areas. With a free delivery service in Ireland and low shipping rates to countries worldwide, they have always provided a competitive and independent alternative to multinationals.
Dedicated promoters of Irish writing, Kennys have welcomed authors to their shop since the beginning and have used their online presence since day one to further promote Irish writing, at home and abroad. They are currently selling Limited Editions of new novels by Colm Tóibín, Kevin Barry, Sally Rooney and Donal Ryan to name a small few, and reaching customers in all continents with these works.
Kennys Bookshop was first opened in High Street, Galway in 1940 by Des and Maureen Kenny. The business fully moved to their current premises in Liosbán Retail Park in Galway in 2009 to concentrate on their online business, a move welcomed by Maureen Kenny who always said, ‘You have to move with the times.’
