Growth of the home market isn’t a fluke, it was a strategy the business had developed that became a necessity during the pandemic – when the overseas trade was effectively outlawed.

When tourists disappeared, so too did a considerable portion of Carrolls’ trade.

“If you wanted to go in and buy an Aran jumper or a magnet, you’d go into Carrolls,” Hyland said.

“Would you have associated Carrolls with Irish soaps or cosmetics or wellness products or candles?”

Pre-Covid, those ranges were lurking in Carrolls stores but as Hyland puts it, “the business model was tourism”.

“If you’d have walked into the stores in December [this year], it would have been heavily geared towards a domestic gifting space,” Hyland recalls.

Engraved Guinness glasses were a hot commodity this festive season, while the release of The Banshees of Inisherin in late October brought Aran jumpers back on the style agenda once again.

“It (the rebirth of the Aran geansaí) happens every year or every other year,” Hyland tells me.

“We were stock-taking in those periods [before the pandemic] so that’ll tell you how busy we used to be,” he laughs.

Addressing the domestic market pushes Carrolls into more direct competition with other retailers and has made Hyland extremely aware of what’s on offer.

Irish retailers need to innovate if they want to get ahead of their international rivals, he says.

“I walked Grafton Street last week and it’s incredible to see the investment in physical retail happening,” he tells me from the retailer’s new head office in Fonthill Business Park in Dublin.

“There are plenty of international brands coming into the country, which is fantastic to see, but that means our own brands – domestic brands like Carrolls – need to up their game.”

First appointed to the role of group chief executive of the gifting retailer in 2018, Hyland harboured a plan to target Irish shoppers from the start but after Covid struck he felt the time was ripe to introduce a new approach.

As Irish consumers returned to Ireland’s main streets after lockdowns, Carrolls changed the “look and feel” of its stores to place Irish gifts front and centre where the more obviously tourist oriented ‘shamrock and shillelaghs’ merchandise might have been previously.

He invested in marketing, introducing a new tagline ‘gifts with grá’.

“We put so much effort into changing the ranges, toning down the stores slightly,” he explains.

As a business, Carrolls has been experimenting with different types of promotion for different customer markets.

“We’ve separated two websites out between an American website and an Irish-European website,” he says.

Now, with restrictions gone and a full St Patrick’s Day on the way, Hyland is content with the positioning of the business which has extended what had been a relatively short season.

Any remaining restrictions around travelling to Ireland were removed in March last year, with the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation estimating that seven million tourists came to Ireland in 2022.

The return of visitors, combined with healthier local demand, saw Carrolls sales in the second half of 2022 surpass levels recorded in the same period in 2019.

Online sales also rose rapidly over the pandemic as families opted to send gifts from home to loved ones in lockdown elsewhere.

Following the reopening of stores, online sales now form 12pc of the business, with Hyland optimistic this will reach 25pc in the next three years.

He islaser-focused on the expansion of the brand’s physical footprint too.

Carrolls has opened three new stores since November 2021.

The retailer also moved into a large warehouse towards the end of the year, which is located beside a new head office.

A wander through the vast warehouse reveals a treasure trove of Irish souvenirs.

In one large box, there are hundreds of Ireland bottle openers, while another contains shamrock suspenders.

Irish flags fill another, while I also spot a green mass of baseball hats, tea towels and t-shirts ready for March 17.

Now, Hyland says there’s probably “one more store in us” in 2023 but adds that the business will be more “cautious” this year due to ongoing uncertainties, such as a possible downturn and the war in Ukraine.

Energy costs have doubled year-on-year.

“While Christmas was very good for us, you can definitely get a sense from other retailers that there were challenges there,” he says, pointing to inflationary pressures.

However, maintaining supply levels has not been a major obstacle for Carrolls, he tells me.

Around 75pc of stock currently comes directly from Irish companies, representing 823 Irish businesses.

Later in the spring, the company will also launch a programme for Irish craft designers or gift makers.

The next move is to deepen the in-store experience.

“My next store – which will hopefully open in 2023 – will be moving the relationship from transactional,” Hyland explains.

The new store looks set to include in-store theatre and entertainment for visitors from home and away.

“You need a reason to come offline,” he puts simply.

Beyond the stores, Hyland’s remit also includes managing the properties that founder Colm Carroll purchased over the past 40 years.

“We have some brilliant locations in Dublin city. How do I use those properties to align with the retail business?”

Hyland’s proposed solution is to create a visitor attraction, which would open in the coming years and which he feels the city urgently requires to boost interest.

“There are certain sectors of attractions that we do very well, the likes of Guinness Storehouse, Jameson Distillery. Anyone outside of that space tends to struggle to do something in Dublin city,” he says.

“There’s a gap there.”