Barry Whelan | Managing Director

Barry is an honours graduate of the University of Glamorgan with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Studies.

He began his retail career with Associated British Foods, the parent company of Penneys/Primark, for their Quinnsworth supermarket brand continuing his grocery industry career with Dunnes Stores working his way up the ranks to manage a number of stores throughout Ireland before finally moving to Fashion and Homewares with the Brown Thomas Group. He moved out of retail into recruitment  and after working for a number of years as a recruitment consultant he set up Excel Recruitment in 2000. Since then Excel has become the leading retail specialist agency recruiting through the entire retail trade.

Barry is known as an expert in retail recruitment throughout the trade and is a contributing writer for Shelf life Magazine where he write a monthly recruitment advice as well as being the chair of the ‘Retail Manager of the Year’, ‘Convenience Manager of the Year’ and is a panel judge for the ‘Convenience Store of the Year’. 

Although the go-to-person for all things retail, in the office Barry specialises in Grocery and Fashion Buying Jobs as well as other head office roles including Merchandising, Head of Retail, the list goes on.