Milly’s Boutique, formerly The Wardrobe, first opened its doors in September 2005 at the height of the Celtic Tiger boom and during a time were boutiques were plentiful but somewhat bland. Like many businesses at that time in Ireland proprietors were focused on volume turnover. This was never going to be the objective of Milly’s Boutique.

The National Heat Treatment Centre (NHTC) began life in University College Dublin in 1993 as a funded research centre led by David Collins, a lecturer in Metallurgy in the Mechanical Engineering Department. To help finance the research operation, it offered contract heat treating services and metallurgical analysis to the engineering industry, predominantly the emerging tool-making sector.