This post is for the 11 British employees of Phorest that live and work in the UK.

On Thursday, you get to vote on one of the most important decisions that affects this company since its inception. Most of the employees of Phorest are citizens of Ireland and do not get to vote on this referendum. This is why I am writing to you.

As someone who lived in the UK for 4 years between 2008 and 2012 while working on getting Phorest off the ground there, I know that you guys have a different view of the EU than that in Ireland. The British media often carry front-page stories critical of the EU, whether it is for being at fault for too much immigration, or creating too much bureaucracy. It seemed to me as an outsider that the media had created a culture where it was easy for politicians to blame Europe for their own shortcomings. I cannot recall ever reading or seeing a headline in a British paper that praised a EU decision or initiative. Whenever I ask people living in Britain what good things the EU has done they struggle to give me an answer. This is compounded by the way Cameron, Osborne and others have based their campaign on the negatives of leaving rather than accentuating the positives of staying in.

However I’m not writing this to get into a debate over the pros and cons of Brexit. Rather I’m going to give you our story and how the EU has influenced it, and as an extension how it has affected you, perhaps unknowingly in your career with us.

We launched into the UK market in 2008. We were the first salon software to bring a number of innovations to UK salons, including the first loyalty system actually designed to grow a salon business (The TreatCard), and credit card secured online bookings. Because both our countries are in the EU, most of the red tape involved in entering another market had been removed and we could operate straight away without creating a UK legal entity. Our Irish company could, as it still does, employ people in the UK. Another nice thing thanks to the EU, was that the workers’ rights of both our countries are almost identical which means it is much simpler for us to manage all our internal contracts.

Similarly, because of EU VAT rules, VAT works the same way as in Ireland and we could start adding VAT to our invoices immediately. These benefits may seem like small things, but actually prove to be significant obstacles to being able to enter a new market.

In contrast, for the last two years, we have been working hard on entering the US. We have found it much more difficult to get the basics right, despite being a much better funded and experienced team than we were back in 2008. We still don’t have a US legal entity and have to use a third party to operate for us, which limits our ability to give US salons the same experience as we do over here. Significantly the Sales Tax rules are very complex and hard to understand (despite the qualified advice we have paid for). There is so much more red tape in place for us to operate properly in the US compared to the UK or other European countries.

Because Irish companies can easily start trading in the UK, this has meant that all businesses and consumers in the UK have access to better products and services if Irish or European companies do a better job e.g. salons get access to better salon software quicker than they would have. These companies then start to employ people in the UK further benefiting the British economy. Of course the same thing applies the other way round. British companies who are better at what they do than Irish companies, get to setup in Ireland quicker and easier than they could before. This pushes the local companies to up their game, always benefiting the consumer or business that uses those types of services or products. And of course this usually means that those British companies grow and employ more people.

Air Travel

I was flying back and forth to the UK every week as I was trying to run Phorest back in Ireland at the same time. As a small company we didn’t have much money then to support all that travelling. Thanks to the deregulation of the national airline monopolies implemented by the EU in 1997, and the subsequent rise of the low fare airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet, the cost of going back and forth was not much more than that of a train ticket. This kind of thing helps the small underdogs compete with the big companies that could always afford higher costs of trading internationally. This deregulation of the air travel market also allows us to fly you over to Dublin on a regular basis. And probably even more significantly it enables you all to fly to other cities and holiday destinations across Europe in a way your parents and grandparents could have only dreamed about 30 years ago.

Telecoms

As you can imagine, being on the road a lot between ’08 and ’12 meant I spent a lot of time on my phone. Since 2007, EU roaming regulations have consistently lowered roaming costs (and they will be prohibited altogether from 2017). This meant that I was able to cheaply call and check emails and stay on top of my job as we became more established. In contrast every time I travel to the US, I pay between $400–600 dollars on roaming charges for data and calls even if I’m only over there for a week! There are no international roaming regulations in the US so the telecom companies are free to rip you off as much as they like.

People

Lots of people on our team including Kirsti (Finland), Pawel and Alex (Poland), Giovanni (Italy), and Fred (France) come from EU countries and as you know, they add a huge amount of value, in terms of output and culture to Phorest. And down the years, we’ve had significant contributions from people like Oscar (Italy) and Mirko (Italy), without whom we wouldn’t have got here. They were able to come and apply for a job with Phorest just the same as anyone else living here because they are EU nationals.

Northern Ireland

Phorest is now the main provider of salon software to the 6 counties of Northern Ireland. Up until 1997, not that many companies based in the southern part of Ireland did much business in the north. After the Good Friday Agreement, the border was removed as the peace process took hold and that meant that companies based north and south could properly treat the whole island as one market. We have benefited enormously from this, and hundreds of salons in the north of Ireland have retained more of their clients as a result.

If the UK decides to leave the EU on Thursday, then the border between the North and South of Ireland is likely to return in some form, as it would become the only land border between the UK and the EU. The EU also contributes billions in financial assistance to Northern Ireland as it continues to recover from the troubles. This would have to end if the UK votes to leave. Apart from the negative impact on the economy that both these things would have on Ireland, it is a shame that all those decades of hard work that it took the people of Britain and Ireland to bring about peace in the north could be undermined by a vote to leave this week.

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Of course the EU isn’t perfect, and there are valid reasons why people are unhappy with it, but I know Phorest would not be employing as many people today as it does, if Ireland and the UK weren’t members of the EU.

I hope you take this letter into consideration when cast your vote on Thursday:)