Had Shakespeare ever written an Irish - as opposed to Scottish - play, it might have been called The Merchant of Waterford. Certainly the city's mercantile roots date back to the early Middle Ages and, as a walk around the principal streets shows, trade flourished in the 18th century when many of its finest buildings were built.
Now it seems that Waterford is enjoying another boom, having recovered from the decay that affected so many old centres of business in the 1980s.
Whether this recovery of the city's old mercantile spirit is entirely beneficial might be open to question. Many of the latest retail properties to open in Waterford tend to belong to the same British multiples found everywhere else.
Boots, for example, is due to arrive when renovation work on premises on Barronstrand Street have been completed. And the much-vaunted City Square Shopping Centre off High Street looks no different to similar schemes in every other Irish city and centres in any English market town.
The arrival of the British chain-stores and their considerable financial clout has inevitably had an impact on local businesses, but not everyone sees this as detrimental. William O'Brien, president of Waterford Chamber of Commerce, suggests that the multiples were at the forefront of the city's retail rejuvenation in the 1990s because they could afford to take a greater risk than smaller concerns.
Opening in 1995, "City Square renewed a great deal of interest in Waterford," he says, adding that the centre "couldn't cater for the demand it had created."
According to O'Brien, after a long period of stagnation, retail outlets in the city have doubled during the 1990s. The Chamber of Commerce's own guide for visitors describes Waterford as "the shopping capital of the south east" and he insists many of the problems which might have hindered growth have been resolved.
Parking spaces have been increased and still more are planned, while pedestrianisation is being further introduced to entice more shoppers into the city centre. This year some of Barronstrand and Broad Street will be closed to traffic and "will certainly make the area more attractive", William O'Brien believes.
While no figures are available to indicate just how much money is being spent in Waterford, one entrepreneur who can point to a growth in trade is Sean Power, who has run Waterford Cruise Developments for 10 years. He aims to bring more cruise liners - and their high-spending passengers - to the city and says 20 such vessels visited Waterford last year; the same number is expected again in 1999. This compares to just one ship in 1988 when he started WCD. "In general," argues Power, "Ireland as a cruise destination has grown enormously." The average spend of cruise passengers, he says, is £100 per person. "In total there were about 5,000 people who came on shore excursions last year, so it's a lucrative business for the stores here." The longer people linger in a city, the more money they are likely to spend, so offering a greater number of attractions - and not just of a retail character - is obviously important.
One imminent addition to Waterford's list of visitor draws is the Granary Heritage Centre on the corner of the Quay and Hanover Street. This 19th century warehouse has been converted by Waterford Corporation at a cost of £4.5 million and is to open on April 4th; the heritage centre on Greyfriars will then become a home for the Waterford Municipal Art Collection, which dates back to the late 1930s and contains more than 200 works.
The new Heritage Centre will house a variety of services including a restaurant and retail outlet. The franchise for these has been given to Nuala Browne-Treacy and her husband Tommy Treacy who run the nearby Waterford City Design Centre. Open a mere 14 months, the centre already feels like a long-established presence, thanks perhaps to the fact that Tommy's father owns the nearby Bridge Hotel as well as Treacy's Hotel in Enniscorthy.
Before its incarnation as the Design Centre the building on the quay was another largely redundant warehouse, its ground floor holding a small shop, but the rest abandoned to pigeons that had arrived through the roof.
Now the interior's entire 15,000 sq ft has been refurbished with clothes for men, women and children offered at ground level; Irish labels predominate here with names such as Paul Costelloe, Deborah Veale, Michael Mortell, Miriam Mone and Pat McCarthy. On the first floor, in addition to a restaurant seating some 60-plus diners, there is a wide range of craft and homeware items for sale including glass, pottery, linen and ironwork.
Finally, the top floor is home to four craftworkers making pottery, papiermache, prints and wicker baskets; they welcome the centre's visitors who can buy examples of the items being made elsewhere in the building. Originally from Strabane, Co Tyrone, Nuala Browne-Treacy has been living in Waterford for the past seven years and says she has noticed enormous changes in retailing during that time.
"My first experience of Waterford, even before I lived here, was as a junior buyer for Penneys and I remember feeling there was no shopping environment at all. People were probably not even aware of the potential and any independent retailer was operating on his own." However, circumstances have now changed.
"The ethos is different. People have become much more enthusiastic about the opportunities available here." She and her husband are among those who have seized those opportunities. Setting up the Waterford City Design Centre, which employs 25 staff during high season, cost £1.5 million. While the target market is both local and national, the former provides about 20 per cent of business.
"We focus on the tourist market," says Browne-Treacy, "although we found when we experimented with more obvious tourist products that wasn't what our customers wanted." While a background in retailing obviously helped when establishing the design centre, she found certain sections of the shop have been more successful with shoppers than others. Women's clothing has performed especially well (probably because this is Browne-Treacy's specific area of expertise) even though "initially I thought the craft side would be strong; it is, but only for certain times of the year."
The women's wear stock is "very brand-focused. We've the second-biggest account in this country for Paul Costelloe outside Brown Thomas. And we hold fashion shows for our customers on the top floor; we had over 350 guests at the last one." Her typical customer she describes as "a woman who's independently stylish and who interprets fashion to suit her lifestyle. She's not fad-driven and shops with quality in mind."
Nuala Browne-Treacy believes the good fortune experienced by the design centre is by no means unusual and that "retailing in Waterford is exceptionally good. We're on the crest of a wave and there are great opportunities here. The strengths lie with independent retailers. People want something that embellishes the whole culture and they want the sense that what they find in a shop will not be available elsewhere." These views are echoed by Eleanor Deegan-Grant, who for the past two and a half years has run All About Eve, specialising in the design and sale of wedding dresses. She says her business has grown by some 400 per cent because "Waterford's become very affluent over the last four or five years". After studying dress design, she took a business course and looked for a niche market.
"Bridalwear was not being looked after in the south-east and a lot of girls were going to Dublin - I know I did before I got married." All About Eve "has managed to keep the customers here in Waterford; we're known for giving them what they want." As a result, the shop now attracts business from as far afield as Kildare; "we work really hard at our service and stock from size eight to 24, which a lot of other shops won't do." If further confirmation of Waterford's new buoyancy were needed, it could come from long-established menswear retailer Tony Fitzgerald, who has two outlets in the city, one bearing his own name and the other, Heroes, targeting younger customers. Men's clothing is a notoriously conservative area of the retailing market where growth rarely occurs. However, Fitzgerald says both his shops are doing better than ever before.
"We're hitting figures now, at what is usually the dullest time of the year, that we would usually get in November, which is coming close to our busiest period. We only hold a sale for one day in the year and this one was up 14 per cent on the last, which was 13 per cent on the one before." Now Fitzgerald is doubling the size of Heroes and actively looking for another outlet in Waterford.
"We've been doing really well for the past two and a half years. There have never been sales figures like there are now."