EE496: How Ashley McDonnell is Raising €50 Million to Take Irish Fashion Brands Global

What does it take to make a plan at 16 - and still be executing on it at 32? Ashley McDonnell saw a Christian Dior exhibition in London as a teenager and decided she was going to work for Dior. She didn't know French. She'd never lived abroad. She had no connections in luxury. Six years later, she was walking into LVMH headquarters on Avenue Montaigne in Paris. Now she's back building in Ireland — founding Ireland Fashion Week, launching Vyko (Ireland's first luxury brand group), and building the kind of long game most founders don't have the patience for. In this episode she pulls back the curtain on how the luxury industry actually works, the psychology behind why people buy luxury, why China is the most important luxury market in the world, and the one piece of advice — focus — that changed everything. SHOW NOTES In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Gary sits down with Ashley McDonnell — founder of Ireland Fashion Week, Vyko Group and the Tech Powered Luxury podcast. Ashley spent over a decade working across LVMH, Christian Dior and Puig, one of Europe's biggest luxury groups, before coming home to build something entirely new. What you'll learn: How Ashley reverse-engineered her way from Galway to Christian Dior at 22 — by mapping the exact path the executives above her had taken Why the luxury industry is built on groups and conglomerates — and what that means for Irish brands trying to scale The psychology of luxury buying — from unlimited budget shoppers to the strategic Chinese traveller saving 20% per handbag Why 90% of luxury sales were offline pre-Covid but almost 100% were digitally influenced What Vyko is — and why Ashley is building Ireland's first startup luxury group from scratch The one-note iPhone system she uses to track every single day of the year across Paris and Dublin Why focus (not ideas) was the advice that changed everything Connect with Ashley: Personal Instagram: Vyko Group: Ireland Fashion Week: Podcast: Tech Powered Luxury: *Our Sponsors * Nostra: Azure: Follow The Entrepreneur Experiment: Instagram: TikTok:

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EE496: How Ashley McDonnell is Raising €50 Million to Take Irish Fashion Brands Global is an episode from The Entrepreneur Experiment by Gary Fox.

This episode is 124:28 long.

This episode was published on Apr 30, 2026.

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