Insider View - on Saturation

Lucy Madden reflects on the damage that copy cat operations can cause – and suggests that many events in Ireland (including festivals) may be at saturation point, or beyond

We’ve all seen the photograph, two celebrities arriving at a party and – shock, horror – they are wearing the same outfit. Naturally, they are putting a good (lifted) face on the situation, but inwardly war has been declared. The knives are out for the hapless designer.

This is not a situation with which I am familiar, as I am neither a celebrity nor have I ever worn an ensemble that anyone else is likely to choose. But the emotion of surprise that one’s life choices are increasingly likely to be replicated is one that I am noticing more and more.

A few years ago, my daughter moved into a new house and, being a keen gardener, set to work to create something horticultural at her back door. Since she had a bird’s eye view from her first floor of her neighbour’s garden, and vice versa, she was a little surprised to see that every time she dug a bed or put a plant into the ground, an exact replica appeared in next door’s garden, down to the smallest detail.

At first, she felt the situation was flattering but by the time the project was complete, the projects were complete, and two identical gardens somehow lacked the charm of an individual creation. The neighbour could be deemed to have been a garden stalker. I know, too, of a family who designed their own house and found within a couple of years that somebody had bought a plot of land on the hillside above theirs, and built a house, similar in every way to their own.

The accident of a shared dress at a party is just that, bad luck, but the proliferation of copy-cat projects has to be to the detriment of most endeavours. Friends who ran a successful off-licence were shocked to find a competitor opening a few hundred yards away.

We are a very small country with all too few people having disposal income and it strikes me that if someone comes up with a good idea that it’s just not on to duplicate their project on their doorstep. A flower shop opened in our local town and seemed to thrive, that is until a similar shop appeared a few doors down. The result, of course, was that they both closed within the year. It seems that you only have to be seen to be doing well and somebody else will get in on the act, your act, your doorstep. Much more would be achieved if people would work together, instead of these endless divisions.

I have been told that there are three farmers’ markets in a certain northern town with a population barely able to support one market and this can’t be construed as healthy competition but just foolishness. Why can’t they all work together?

You can argue that replicating a successful business is the dynamic of a free market but whatever happened to common sense? We are suffering from saturation. The retail sector has been saturated over recent years to such an extent that in every town and city abandoned premises line our streets. We as a country have been saturated with hotels and now those who have survived must compete with the rock-bottom prices offered by the NAMA hotels.

And then there are festivals, in danger of saturation. Here I must declare an interest as a mother-in-law of a festival organiser who has struggled to put on an event for the last five years that has proved to be very popular in spite of a low budget, obscure location and bad weather.

Imagine the shock, then, to discover that two weeks after the proposed date of this year’s festival, a few miles up the road a neighbour is hosting a festival that includes some of the same artists that were to have performed at our festival. What is going on?

What is going on is that there is a level of desperation combined with a vacuity of ideas and the notion that you can have a piece of someone else’s cake. But with a small footfall there are only so many hotels, shops, farmers’ markets and festivals that the population can support.

And, let it never be forgotten, that when over-supply has put a stop to what is creative and authentic in our society, we’ve still got to look each other in the face.