From Redundancy to Europe-Wide E-Commerce: Daniel Plewman (Happythreads)

After losing his engineering job during the 2008 crash, Daniel Plewman found himself unemployed, on the dole, and unsure what came next. A chance moment — his wife struggling to source quality scrubs from the US — sparked the idea that would eventually become Happythreads, an e-commerce scrubs and healthcare uniform business now operating across Ireland, the UK, France, Spain, Germany and beyond. In this episode, Danny shares how he built Happy Threads from a spare room in Stoneybatter, going door-to-door with samples, and why launching an e-commerce scrubs business long before it was obvious became his unfair advantage. He opens up about the early years of survival, cashflow tricks, moments of being “technically bankrupt,” and the burnout and hospitalisation that forced him to rethink how he worked and led. 🎧 In this episode, you’ll learn: – Spotting overlooked opportunities and creating a new market – How e-commerce cashflow helped the business survive – Building a 25-person team across Europe – Burnout, lifestyle choices, and the high-dependency hospital wake-up call – Leadership, culture, and moving towards a business that can run without you 🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube

You can listen to From Redundancy to Europe-Wide E-Commerce: Daniel Plewman (Happythreads) online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

From Redundancy to Europe-Wide E-Commerce: Daniel Plewman (Happythreads) is an episode from Irish Business Builders by Conor Kearney.

This episode is 49:28 long.

This episode was published on Dec 8, 2025.

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