Dublin Retail & E-Commerce Revolution

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Lorraine Heskin is the Managing Director of Gourmet Food Parlour. Hailing from a small village in Co. Galway, she studied in University of Limerick before heading off to New York for 3 years working in a diverse range of food businesses. On returning to Dublin, Lorraine and her business partner Lorraine Byrne made the decision to open their first 25 seater café in Dun Laoghaire in 2006. Through hard work and dedication, Gourmet Food Parlour has grown into a very successful business employing a team of over 300 people across the group. With 8 locations across Dublin, (Dun Laoghaire, Swords, Malahide, Santry, Deli Bar Swords, Skerries, House Leeson Street, AIG) our newest restaurant in Salthill, Galway and our ever-growing Catering & Event Business, it has been a busy 12 years. Lorraine’s hands on approach to running the business is the driving force behind GFP. Her dedication, determination & hard work filters down throughout the company. She creates a positive working environment throughout Head office and each location. Lorraine often speaks of Team GFP and how the strength of the brand is down to every person that works for her. Lorraine sets high standards and expectations for her team, which constantly challenges each individual to strive for better, and to ensure there is attention paid to every detail. To become a successful business, there needs to be a very committed, hard working and driven leader at the helm and Lorraine is certainly all of these. Lorraine was recently a runner up in the Entrepreneur of The Year Category at the Image Women in Business Awards 2018. You will often see Lorraine featured on various panel discussions and networking events. As a leader in the food & beverage industry she’s been invited as the Keynote speaker for Network Ireland at two separate networking events in 2018, AIB Future Sparks events in 2018 and 2019.

Marcus is co-founder and Managing Director of Sigma Retail Partners which was established in 2015. Since then Marcus has grown the company to be the leading provider of retail asset management services in Ireland with over €0.5bn of assets under management.

Mr Rossel is the Development Director responsible for leading the 1m sft retail-led mixed-use Town Centre project at Cherrywood. He has worked for over 15 years with leading retail-led mixed-use developers such as Westfield, Lendlease and Majid Al Futtaim across Australia, Asia and the Middle East. Prior to joining Hines in Europe, Mr Rossel was leading the development one of the largest and most progressive retail-led mixed use schemes globally for Emaar in the United Arab Emirates, known as Dubai Square. In Singapore, Mr Rossel has been involved in the development origination and conversion of numerous successful city defining, large-scale mixed-use projects with international capital partners including, the Jem retail-led scheme and the Paya Lebar Quarter workplace-led development

Florence heads up the Retail Department in CBRE taking care of many facets of the Retail Market in addition to looking after her many clients and instructions. Florence specialises principally in Retail Agency and Acquisition as well as assisting the consultancy team in any retail consultancy projects. Florence sits as 1 of 6 on the Executive Committee who are involved with the running and forward planning of CBRE. In addition, she oversees the running of the Valuations department and Professional Services department.

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Des Travers commenced his role as CEO of DPD Ireland in July 2017. Des's strategy for DPD Ireland is focused on extensive growth through innovation, people development and service excellence. The strategy will build DPD Ireland's business to be the best in the market place, providing sustainability and opportunity for both DPD employees and network members throughout the country. Des has been with DPD Group for 23 years.

Ger Perdisatt is the Enterprise Director for Microsoft Ireland, leading the teams who work with Microsoft’s largest commercial customers. Working with the extensive Microsoft technical and industry resources, as well as with technology partners, Ger’s teams help customers to drive their digital transformation agenda by leveraging Microsoft technology. Ger has held a number of senior management positions since joining Microsoft in 2011, most recently as Chief of Staff for Microsoft’s businesses in Western Europe, responsible for all business operations and resourcing across 12 European markets. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked in sales leadership, business development and customer strategy roles in financial services. Passionate about the transformational potential of technology for businesses and consumers, Ger also has a keen interest in technology trends including IoT, blockchain and quantum computing. He holds an MBA from UCD Smurfit Business School, as well as ACCA DipFM, HDip IT (NUI Maynooth), and BA (UCD) qualifications.

Rob Quill is the Transport & Logistics sector lead for AIB Commercial Banking. In his role he supports a variety of SME customers from across the Transport & Logistics sector as they seek finance to position their businesses for growth. Earlier in 2018, AIB published a sector outlook report focusing on the growth in Online Retail and how this is driving demand for logistics services in this area. The report utilised data from AIB credit and debit card spending to track the growth in e-Commerce.