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My mind was already made up – I was waiting for my wife, Laurie, to come to the same conclusion. It was spring break 2016. We were having dinner in a favourite restaurant in Venice Beach, LA, where we were living. We knew we wanted to move from LA, and Laurie said ‘yeah, I think West Cork is the place’. That’s when we decided to put the wheels in motion.
We did debate are we completely insane? All the logistics of moving 5,000 miles away. But once we made the decision it was liberating, very exciting to be starting fresh.
We’d spent some time in Ireland in 2015 and by dumb luck spent more than half that summer in West Cork. The house we rented is only about 100m from where we live now. At night, out across green fields and the sea, you can see the lights of the Fastnet.
But when we first arrived in Schull that summer of 2015, it was fairly late. We went to the pub to get something to eat. Our son, Ben, was very young then – he’s 11 now and our daughter Emilia’s 15 – and we wanted to get milk. But the shops were closed. We said we needed milk and someone said ‘hold on’ and went behind the bar and filled up a container of milk – and he didn’t even work there.
It was a wonderful gesture. It spoke to us about how people are in West Cork, so willing to help.
Walking around Schull, we looked at the primary school and the surrounding wall was only waist-high. You could see it’s just meant to keep the cows out, rather than keeping any dangerous people out, very different to what things were in America. It seemed such a sweet place – we could really see our kids going to school there.
That was a big thing. In LA, you wouldn’t want your kids walking down the block without having an eye on them – here you could let your guard down.
When we returned to the US, we really knew we didn’t want to be in LA. It’s a bit crazy to go nearly halfway around the world to find a new place to live, so over Easter 2016 we travelled to Oregon to look at neighbourhoods and potentially living there. They were nice, but ultimately we decided to give West Cork a try. It was a place we thought we could really love.
And we did wonder… people were so lovely when we were visiting the area – would they be as friendly to someone who’d moved there? When we first moved there was a man living down the road. He had a sailing boat and he knew our kids were really interested in animals and that the seals were having their pups on Middle Calf Island.
He said ‘now’s a good time’ and he invited us on the sailing boat, took us to the island, showed us where the baby seals were. The kids loved that. There were ponies on the island, quite friendly – he had told us to bring apples for them. The kids loved those guys. It’s just a really happy memory from that time.
And then about two years ago – it was the weekend – I noticed Ben watching a YouTube video about some guy who’d bought a palette of Amazon returns, who went on to sell them at a car-boot sale. The very concept caught my interest, that idea of buying returned items – I didn’t think it was possible.
I did some research – these returns used to be sent to landfill. It set some things in motion that I’d never have guessed could happen. After learning all about how it worked, I tried it myself. I bought my first order of four of these palettes of returns and tried selling out of my own garage.
I’d been self-employed in LA and in West Cork was involved in advertising. I still am, but my main focus is this new business. I wouldn’t have got into it if I didn’t think it had the potential to be profitable, but I’ve always been interested in the environment. That this gave an opportunity to be a key player in the circular economy was definitely a bonus. It sealed the deal.
My interests have always been outdoor-related. When I was young we were fortunate to have easy access to nature. Living in Connecticut we’d go camping in Maine, in Washington State. My parents instilled an ethos to leave a place in better condition than we’d found it. If we were hiking we’d always pick up rubbish along the trail. It was a game between me and my brothers, trying to outdo each other – who could get the most pieces of rubbish?
In order to make the business work, I figured it needed to operate at some scale and it has really grown. It has meant employment for three people in the local community. Plus myself, there are four of us working in the warehouse every day. As the business grows, more help will be required.
I love West Cork and we do want to give back. This is a real concrete way of doing that.
- Chris Mason is an eBay seller. His business, Clearance Items Limited (Items-IE) sells returned goods, diverting them from landfills and giving them a second life (https://items.ie/).
- eBay connects buyers and sellers across 190 markets – it supports Irish SME’s, simplifying the export process through tools like eBaymag.