The Project

Reducing waste and disposal costs created an opportunity for the business to develop new innovative quality products for high end markets using sustainable bi-products from duck farming. This is where InterTradeIreland FUSION support came in.

The company employed fashion graduate Karen Toner who helped the company to create innovative design solutions for the high end fashion market, creating natural thermal jackets using Silver Hills pure duck down and combining Irish artist and designer Helen Steele’s fine art prints into digital printed designs for the thermal outerwear jackets.

What the support meant to the company

According to Helen Steele, Creative Director of Helen Steele (fashion brand) and Director of Silver Hills: “Through InterTradeIreland’s FUSION programme we were able to take our project to the next level. We were selling large quantities of our duck down internationally which was used to manufacture natural thermal jackets,

Karen’s project focussed on competitor and market analysis, designing samples and new product development. The result is that we now use our duck down to make natural thermal jackets locally, Karen was instrumental in developing the project.

The academic support provided by Janet Coulter, Senior Lecturer in Fashion Design, University of Ulster was vital to our project. The use of the University of Ulster’s technical equipment and lab was integral to the research of our smart tech fabrics. Ms. Coulter’s extensive research and passion for this area of the industry has been both inspirational and extremely helpful. Her supervision on this project helped us to bring our product to market quicker than projected.' 


Further Information

For more information on InterTradeIreland Technology Transfer and Innovation Programme , FUSION visit www.intertradeireland.com/fusion.