Five Waterford designers are heading to Dublin’s RDS this January for Showcase 2026, Ireland’s largest and longest-running creative trade expo — and according to those involved, it is the county’s strongest showing at the event in years. Supported by Local Enterprise Office Waterford, the quintet represents some of the most interesting and commercially credible creative work currently coming out of the south-east: bold illustration, natural skincare, hand-drawn gifts, wearable art and the most heartwarming sock origin story in Irish retail. Here’s who they are and why you should be paying attention.
What Is Showcase?
Showcase: Ireland’s Creative Expo has been running for over 40 years and is the island’s premier B2B trade event for design-led products. Held annually at the RDS in Dublin, it brings together Ireland’s most talented makers and designers with buyers from more than 20 countries — retailers, stockists, gift buyers, fashion buyers and interior design specialists from Ireland, the UK, Europe, the United States and Asia. For an independent Irish designer, a stand at Showcase is one of the most direct routes to national and international wholesale distribution. Getting there matters.
Showcase 2026 takes place from 18 to 20 January at the RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin. Waterford’s five designers will be exhibiting in Hall 3 — the Local Enterprise Hall, supported by the Local Enterprise Office network, which funds stand costs, preparation and mentoring for emerging regional businesses across Ireland.
Jac Sinnott — Sassy Jac
Jac Sinnott started making things in spring 2019, and the origin story is a good one. Energised by campaigning for Repeal the previous year, she began painting messages on plates and pots with a Sharpie for her own kitchen walls. The pieces she shared on social media got a reaction she wasn’t expecting, and Sassy Jac was born.
Based in Tramore, Sassy Jac is a collection of cards, art prints, mugs and gifts rooted in a very particular voice — bold, funny, self-aware, politically engaged and deeply Irish. The brand has a feminist sensibility that never tips into preachiness and a visual style that is instantly recognisable. If you’ve seen a card in a gift shop in the south-east in the last few years that made you laugh out loud before you read the full thing, there’s a reasonable chance Jac made it.
Sassy Jac is one of the businesses in the CC Creatives collective in Waterford and has been building its retail presence steadily since 2019. Showcase is the kind of platform that can turn a well-regarded regional brand into a nationally stocked one, and Sassy Jac is exactly the kind of product buyers from boutiques and gift shops will be looking for.
Jayné Cahill — Jayné Cahill Art
Scottish-born and Waterford-based, Jayné Cahill creates intricate pen-and-ink illustrations rooted in a preoccupation with place, memory and the moments that accumulate into a sense of belonging. Her drawings of Irish landmarks — streetscapes, coastlines, townscapes and country scenes — have a quality of attention that rewards close looking: the detail is extraordinary, and the feeling they generate in people who recognise the places depicted is the kind of emotional response that turns a print into a purchase and a purchase into a gift.
Beyond fine art prints, Jayné’s work extends into a growing range of art-inspired homeware, cards and gifts — the kind of product range that works both as a standalone gift purchase and as a retail entry point into her larger body of work. Her county colour series, which places local landmarks against county-specific colour palettes, has proven particularly popular in gift retail contexts and is the kind of thing that travels well — bought by visitors as a souvenir, or given by locals who want to celebrate the places they love.
Lynn Shead — Natures Alchemy
Lynn Shead trained as a scientist before redirecting her knowledge and instincts toward herbalism, and the resulting brand — Natures Alchemy — carries the credibility of both disciplines. The skincare products she creates are natural formulations, using herbs grown in County Waterford, and the range has been developed with the kind of care and rigour that distinguishes genuine craft cosmetics from the generic ‘natural’ label that has been applied to everything from industrial moisturisers to washing-up liquid.
One of the most distinctive features of the Natures Alchemy brand is its innovative magnetic labelling system — a practical and sustainable solution to product identification that also functions as a design statement. In a retail environment where skincare shelves are crowded with virtually identical-looking bottles, standing out visually while maintaining clarity of information is a real challenge. Natures Alchemy appears to have solved it elegantly.
The natural skincare category is genuinely competitive at Showcase — buyers in this space are experienced and discerning — but a locally sourced, scientifically grounded product from a credible maker with a strong visual identity is exactly what stockists are looking for. Watch this stand carefully.
Carmel Grant — Carmel Grant Designs
Carmel Grant works from her studio in Waterford City, producing hand-drawn caricature gifts and playful illustrated designs with a personalisation offering that sets her apart in the gift market. Her product range spans personalised framed gifts, celebration guest signing boards, wedding invitation cards, digital art commissions, and the Paper Doll book collection — a recent addition that has broadened her audience considerably.
What Carmel does well is identify the moments in people’s lives that call for something more considered than a generic gift — weddings, milestone birthdays, retirements, new babies — and create something that will be kept rather than stored in a drawer. The caricature style, done well, is a genuinely difficult thing to pull off: it requires a light touch and an ability to capture likeness without unkindness, and Carmel has both. The guest signing board concept is particularly clever — it gives wedding guests something to interact with that becomes a lasting keepsake for the couple.
Polly Doyle — Polly & Andy
The story behind Polly & Andy is, frankly, the best reason to start a business we’ve come across in a while. Polly Doyle’s son Andy has sensitive skin, and after trying seemingly every type of sock available, she discovered that bamboo was the only fibre he could wear comfortably — and that finding bamboo socks of any quality was considerably harder than it should be. So she went and made them herself.
The Polly & Andy range is built around bamboo socks that are sustainably sourced, super-soft, breathable, moisture-wicking, hypoallergenic and seamlessly toed — the last feature being particularly significant for anyone with sensory sensitivities for whom a raised toe seam is a genuine source of discomfort. The product solves a real problem in a well-made, well-considered way, which is a better foundation for a business than most. The sustainability angle gives it additional retail relevance in a market where buyers are actively seeking credible eco alternatives to conventional textiles.
Polly & Andy is the kind of brand that tends to generate strong word-of-mouth once people try the product — which is exactly what you want when you’re building a direct-to-consumer and wholesale business simultaneously.
The Role of Local Enterprise Office Waterford
All five designers are attending Showcase with the support of Local Enterprise Office Waterford, which has funded and facilitated Waterford’s presence in the Local Enterprise Hall. The LEO’s involvement matters: Showcase stands are a significant investment for small businesses, and without the support structure the LEO provides — covering stand costs, offering pre-event mentoring and preparation support — events of this scale would be out of reach for many independent makers at the early stages of building a wholesale business.
The fact that this is described as Waterford’s strongest representation at Showcase in years suggests the LEO has been deliberately building toward a more coherent county presence at the expo — the kind of critical mass that allows regional identity to function as a selling point rather than just a postcode. Five businesses from the same county, presenting across illustration, skincare, gifts and textiles, represents a genuinely diverse and commercially strong offering.
Why This Matters Beyond the RDS
Showcase is a trade event, not a consumer one — the buyers walking those halls are retailers, not shoppers. But the downstream effect of what happens in the RDS in January is felt across the retail landscape for the rest of the year. A stockist deal landed at Showcase means Waterford-made products sitting on shelves in gift shops, boutiques and department stores across Ireland and beyond. It means income for makers, profile for the county, and the kind of sustainable commercial foundation that allows creative businesses to grow rather than simply survive.
Waterford has an increasingly confident creative and craft sector — one that is rooted in the county’s identity but not limited by it. The five businesses heading to the RDS in January are a good cross-section of what that sector looks like right now: diverse in medium, serious in quality, and ready for a wider audience. We’ll be cheering them on from Waterford, and we’d encourage anyone reading this to find them, follow them and, where possible, buy their work.
Waterford’s craft and design industry has its strongest representation in years at Showcase 2026.
Local Enterprise Office Waterford
