Family-run SG Education and Art Shop has been serving Sligo’s creative community for 40 years
SG Education – an art supplies shop – is celebrating 40 years of serving Sligo’s creative population.
One part of the business, the SG Art Shop, has existed in Sligo under different names over the years, from Art Upstairs in High Street, to Art Supply on Harmony Hill and now SG Art Shop on the Old Dublin Road past Carraroe.
The company was founded by Hermann Demmel in 1982. Hermann had been general manager of Filler and Feibig, a German owned factory based in Cleveragh for 19 years before the it closed. Hermann, who was now married into the community, kept the school supplies arm of the German company and created Sligo Graph.
In 2005, Karl, Hermann’s son, returned home with his family from Dublin to take over the family business. During this time the company rebranded as SG Education which does a national trade, while the extended SG Art Shop serves a more local audience.
Karl explained that he came from a marketing background which he felt could be adapted well to the running of a business – and a thriving company 17 years later proves as much.
“After years of working in marketing for different multi-nationals in London and Dublin, I felt the skills I had were easily transferable to building SG Education. “During Covid, with schools and art classes severely impacted, the business could easily have ground to a halt. “However, with the abrupt shift to working from home, SG Education was well positioned to manage the change in the product mix and benefit from the sudden surge in the people picking up art as a hobby again.
“We have been delighted to have seen increased footfall year on year since we expanded our warehouse and art shop in 2019 and thankfully it has continued to grow steadily.
“Covid had a dramatic effect on business, but there was a need to get supplies to people who were now doing everything from home so the hit from the lockdown wasn’t as severe as it might have been.” Sligo has a thriving art scene which is well supplied by SG Art Shop. Karl said that Sligo’s art community is strong and has undoubtedly grown as a result of new and returning hobby artists who picked up a brush and palette during the pandemic.
“We cater a lot to hobby artists. Sligo has always had a busy art scene and we saw a big boom in the growth of hobby artists since the lockdown in 2020.
“Lots of people that discovered us for the first time have decided to keep it up since then and have become regular customers.
“Artists who teach classes also frequently call out to us and are a great means of spreading our name to other artists. Word of mouth is still extremely important in the art world and it is a very tight-knit community in Sligo which regularly network with each other.” Customer service is important to Karl and the team at SG Art Shop. The shop places an onus on adapting to the needs of artists, whose work demands great variety in supplies.
“It has been our pleasure to provide supplies for Sligo’s artists for many years and we look forward to doing so for many yet to come.
“The art being as unique and varied as it is, our customers often come to us with valuable insight on how we should adapt our range of supplies and we are proud to be able to respond to that.”
As SG Education supplies schools and colleges throughout Ireland with a range of products from robotics to art materials, the benefit to the SG Art shop is that it can carry a much larger variety of products than a standalone shop.
They have a full selection of products from luxury artist quality brands such a Caran d’ache, to student quality ranges like the new Amsterdam range of acrylic paint that has just landed.
In the months before the first lockdown, they opened a small gallery space in the foyer of the SG Artshop, and every month customers are given an opportunity to exhibit their work.
This has proven to be a great addition to the space – customers love to see the work that their peers are producing, and it is a great opportunity to purchase work from Sligo-based artists.
The gallery currently has an exhibition of work by Mary Kenny who is based in Strandhill, and later in the month will be showing work by Marie O’Gara who lives and works in north Sligo.
SG Education are constantly developing and growing their range. “We are now really excited by the new launch of our ‘SG Makerspace’ to cater for artists, engineers, teachers, and creative people in general who are starting to seek out purpose built creative technology spaces,” says Karl.
“The SG Makerspace will provide a complete design, fit and supply service for creative spaces. We can deliver a turnkey operation from initial CAD design, furniture fit out, supply of creative technology equipment such as 3D printers and laser cutters, as well as training and education with our robothink.ie program, a fun STEM, coding, robotics and engineering initiative for kids.” SG Education and Art Shop is open Monday to Friday, from 9am until 5pm, and from 12 noon until 5pm on Saturday. They are located at Unit 8A at the business park on the Old Dublin Road in Carraroe.
They can also be reached by calling 071 9153810, or online by visting www.sgeducation.ie.