Guiney, Denis (1893–1967), retail businessman, was born 9 September 1893 at Knockawinna, Brosna, Co. Kerry, eldest son and second child among five sons and two daughters of Cornelius Guiney, small farmer, and Julia Guiney (née Crowley). He was educated at Knockaclarig national school; was apprenticed to a relative, William Crowley, in the drapery business; and served his time in a shop at Killorglin, Co. Kerry, beginning on 22 June 1908, the earliest date on which he could leave school. In 1911 he moved to Messrs O'Connors' in Kilrush, Co. Clare; and the following February to Michael O'Leary's shop in Killarney.
He went up to Dublin in July 1917, and worked in Roberts & Co. in Grafton St. He was employed for a time as a traveller in the south and west by Wolsey, the leading English woollen goods manufacturers. In 1920 he was moved by Wolsey to the Dublin area at a time when he is said to have been involved in intelligence work with Michael Collins (qv). Then he went to Leicester for a time to gain some experience in the English trade. In April 1921 he returned to Dublin, and on 6 May he opened his own shop at 79 Talbot St. On 13 June he married Nora Gilmore from Moylough, Co. Galway.
In the heavy fighting in Dublin during the civil war, his shop was destroyed on 5 July 1922. He reopened the shop, now enlarged, in 1923. The depression affected many businesses, but Denis Guiney, who believed in a quick turnover at low prices, now found his real opening. In 1931 (by which time his turnover was thirty times what it had been ten years earlier) he bought out the leases of 80 Talbot St. and further enlarged his premises, increasing the number of departments. In 1933 he sold his house to Gerald Boland (qv) of Fianna Fáil – evidence of a new connection with Fianna Fáil. He bought a large early-Victorian house, ‘Auburn’ on the Howth road, a symbol of his increasing prosperity, where he lived for the rest of his life. Nora Guiney died of cancer on 10 March 1938. On 19 October 1938 he married his second wife, Mary Leahy (Mary Guiney (qv)) from Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick, who worked in the shop.
In 1940 the opportunity arose to buy from the receiver one of Dublin's largest department stores, Clery's in O'Connell St. (This may well have been the world's first purpose-built department store in 1853, and at one time had been owned by William Martin Murphy (qv) and his partners.) This was seen as a major coup for a man who was already an established Dublin character.
Guiney established a new company, Clery & Co. (1941) Ltd, to run the store and completed the purchase with a cheque for £230,000, which became legendary. He subsequently spent large sums on rebuilding the store's restaurant, bars, and ballroom. The business magazine Irish Industry paid him the rare compliment of a tribute issue in November 1941. During the war years, when newsprint was restricted, he published Guiney's News as a vehicle for advertising his shops. He employed aggressive advertising for his firm rather than for himself, and applied to Clery's his principle of a quick turnover at narrow margins. During years of economic difficulty at the time of the second world war and through the 1950s, he was a leading figure in the drapery business. Though looked on with disfavour by some other proprietors, his shop became an essential outlet for many Irish manufacturers. At the end of the war he refused an offer for Clery's from British business interests, and celebrated the silver jubilee of the original Talbot St. store on 7 May 1945. For the centenary of the death of Daniel O'Connell (qv), Guiney, as a loyal Kerryman, donated a thousand guineas (£1,050) in 1946 to a fund headed by Archbishop McQuaid (qv) to save Derrynane.
On 16 October 1955, in what became known as ‘the Clery's speech’, Seán Lemass (qv), then in opposition, laid out a new economic approach, which formed the foundations for the first plan of economic development, now accepted as a significant departure point in the development of modern Ireland. Ireland was beginning a social and religious transformation which had implications for Irish business, especially one like Clery's, so closely associated with the provision of clerical garb. The firm still prospered: in 1965 Guiney refused another London-based offer of £11 million for Clery's.
Denis Guiney died in Dublin on 8 October 1967, a year after the opening of Dublin's first out-of-town shopping centre – a form of marketing that would pose a challenge to city-centre stores. Clery's and the original shop in Talbot St. continued under Mary Guiney's direction, after she had challenged Guiney's will to win total control of his personal estate, which was valued at £113,950. She was nearly killed in May 1974 when one of the Dublin bombs exploded outside the Talbot St. shop. She continued to maintain her hold on the firm, refusing both a management buy-out and an external takeover. She survived to the age of 103, dying on 23 August 2004, and was buried with Denis Guiney and his first wife in Glasnevin. A formal portrait of Denis Guiney is owned by Clerys (the company name in its modern form); no private papers are accessible.
Denis Guiney was one of those individuals whose influence on the life of their fellow countrymen was great, but who are rarely, if ever, alluded to in conventional history.