Well here we are, My name is Tony Pond and this is my dear wife Sylvia. We moved to Donegal in the March of 1983 along with our two sons, Andrew and Joe. Thus began an ongoing love affair with this beautiful county. Our various activities in employment and voluntary vocation gave us many opportunities to see Donegal in all its splendor and to be able to compare it with all the other counties in the Emerald Isle, thus always re-affirming to ourselves that we are in the best part (as we perceive it).

2001 was the year we formed our small publishing company - Emerald Reflections with the aim  to try and promote this "forgotten county" and give our visitors something fresh and up to date. Postcards became our first product. I set about building a portfolio of fresh pictures to use and at the same time began to learn how to create artworks for printing. This meant getting to grips with computer technology and digital photography. Having been out of the electronic industry for some 20years this was not so easy. We started with a set of 24 postcards and had 1000 printed of each and then, with Sylvia's help,  we started to find outlets for them.

The second product followed closely, this being ready to frame photographs. Over time we settled on two sizes; 12 x 10 and 8 x6.

We exhibited some of these at a local craft fair in November 2001 in Letterkenny, and it was at this event that the idea of a new product was thought of.

A CALENDAR just for Donegal. The idea was very exciting and we finally settle on an appropriate title for it - "The Beauty of Donegal". In fact this has become a sort of trade mark for all our products now. That first calendar for 2003 was A4 (11 x 8) in size, and featured six landscape photos in a bi-monthly arrangement. We had 2000 printed and managed to sell most of them. 2004 calendar was a monthly one with twelve panoramic photos and days chart featured on the same page, still A4 in size but this one was spiral bound. Again 2000 were printed and sold.

The 2005 calendar saw us settle on our present format, a 28 page full color 12 monthly, with pages 2 and 3 displaying a brief resume of the county and the back cover featuring a map of the county with the featured photos highlighted in thumbnail form placed in their appropriate area. This was done to help our visitors know where the places existed. Added now was a custom designed card envelope, making this an ideal gift to send anywhere in the world. 3000 were printed and sold. For 2006 we printed three calendars, one for Donegal, one for Northern Ireland and one for the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh, County Tyrone, a combined total of 6000. For 2007 we included additional photos with the days chart show thumbnails scenes of the area featured by the main photo and this proved very successful. 5000 were printed and we had sold out by mid December 2006. For 2008 we started with a print run of 7000 but by September we needed a further 3000 to see us through the rest of the year. Basically we have kept to this size of production using September as a bench mark to see if more will be needed to see out the year. Both 2009 and 2010 calendar went well and now we have just released the 2011 edition and we think this one is the best so far. We have also drawn up a list of potential places for the 2012 edition.

During these years our postcards selection has continued to grow. over 300 have been designed and printed, still in limited amounts thus ensuring that the stocks in the outlets are kept fresh and new. For 2010 we added 30 completely new ones.

2009 saw us add a set of 8 bookmarks to our range displaying panoramic scenes and having an Irish Saying on the reverse side. We decided to include these sayings into the  2010 calendar and this was received very well so now they will be a regular calendar feature.

Still though, something seemed missing. A local book shop proprietor focused us on this, an illustrated book of the county. For a couple of years we thought about it and finally on 26th July 2008 we released a 100 page 300mm x 210mm landscape book entitled "Donegal at its best." The response has been fantastic! Maybe in the future we will release another edition showing places we had to miss out in the first one. Possibly too, we are thinking of some kind of DVD presentation of the county.

Overcoming Obstacles

Total commitment has been the only way to over coming obstacles. We have had good support from a local printer (Browneprinters Ltd) and this we have greatly appreciated. We have always been prepared to adjust our thinking when dealing with our customers, realizing that our products are tourist orientated and this is generally a seasonal cliental for everyone so cash flow has always been a problem. We seemed to have finally overcome this one with a Sell then Pay system. We call this our Sell'n'Pay which basically means for our outlets here in Donegal we supply all the products free of charge and payment is only made when they are sold.

Community projects

We now have three grandsons and one of these attends the local gael schoile here in Letterkenny. During his first year there an opportunity arose to help out with producing a calendar for the school and the 2010 edition is now the 4th one completed. Also one of our sons is involved with the Donegal Mountain Rescue Team so for 2008 and 2009 we produced a calendar for distribution by them. For 2010 we put together various reports from members of the team and compiled a 40 page 2010 Annual Report.