Former asylum seeker grows €9m car dealership through social media efforts

Emmet RyanTuesday March 24, 2026

Nadia Adan helms a business with two garages, more than 500,000 followers on social media and €9m in revenue

Nadia Adan says selling a car on the basis of a TikTok video convinced her to set up a dealership. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

When Nadia Adan sits in a spotless Co Wicklow showroom next to a Ferrari 488 GTB, it’s a scene that underlines just how far she has come since arriving in Ireland almost three decades ago.

Adan, founder and owner of Ashford Motors, came to Ireland from Somalia in 1997 as a refugee with her mother, fleeing the war. She now leads a fast-growing operation with two garages, an online audience of more than 500,000 followers and projected revenue of €9 million in 2026.

“We’ve evolved from a single-site operator to a scalable dealership now with multiple sites,” says Adan. “We’ve gone from €2.2 million in revenue in 2022 to €5 million in 2025,”

“We’re forecasting over €9 million revenue from the two sites, in Ashford and Rathnew, this year. That’s the conservative estimate.”

The Ashford premises serves as the flagship location, specialising in high-end vehicles, while the Rathnew operation — branded as Ashford Approved — is aimed at entry-level buyers. For Adan, the contrast with her early life is stark.

“We were homeless across a few different countries before we got to Ireland. We asked for asylum and the Irish people were so welcoming. As soon as mam got her papers, she started working. She worked three jobs to put me through school,” Adan says.

“Education was the one thing she drilled into me every day. She was a business woman in her former life and lost everything. Her thing was to always have your education to fall back on.”

That focus on education was reinforced by Adan’s mother at every stage, including personally going into a dean’s office in Trinity to persuade the university to admit her daughter to a master’s programme.

With her master’s completed, Adan’s first professional steps followed a conventional finance track: she joined State Street as an equity analyst.

“I did that for three years and got amazing exposure, doing analyst days with the likes of McDonald’s and Walmart. What helped me in the job was being a people person. I loved getting to know how different businesses marketed and pivoted themselves,” she says.

After three years, she opted for a new challenge and moved to Investec as a stockbroker, drawn by the sales element of the work. It was there, she says, that the idea that would become Ashford Motors began to take shape.

Nadia Adan runs two car dealerships in Co Wicklow. Photograph Nick Bradshaw

“All of the guys working there had big fancy cars – Range Rovers, Porches, BMW M5s. I got my first car, a BMW 320 M Sport Coupe. I ended up selling it one day on my lunch break and I turned a profit,” she says.

She decided to sell the vehicle directly after a negative trade-in experience at a dealership — an encounter she believes was influenced by the fact she was a woman. The episode, she says, sharpened her resolve.

“I felt, God, is this what women have to deal with all the time? Now I have a client list of woman, entrepreneurs across tech and finance, who come to me to buy their cars because they don’t want to be treated like that.”

Not everyone was immediately supportive when Adan decided to leave stockbroking and set up a dealership in 2020 — especially at home.

“My mother was disgusted with me, to be honest. She said I’d left my whole degree and life to sell cars on the side of the road. She was very upset initially.”

Still, the move was calculated rather than impulsive. Adan continued making direct car sales while working, using the profits to build the seed funding needed to launch the company.

Her finance background helped with the basics of running the business. With an initial loan from AIB, she rented a site in Rathnew, opening in January 2020. Within months, Covid restrictions shut down the country — a moment that pushed her towards a new strategy: building a customer base online.

“No one could really move and I was trying to work out how people would find out about this girl in Co Wicklow selling cars. I was always comfortable with social media, growing up in the era of the Kardashians, Instagram and Bebo,” she says.

“I went on Instagram and TikTok and just started making videos. It was a time when you could go viral and the biggest video got 30 million views.”

The breakout clip, featuring a blue Lamborghini, proved pivotal. Its reach helped steer the business towards higher-end stock in 2022 — and, crucially, demonstrated that social media attention could translate into sales.

“I ended up selling a car from a TikTok video. That was a real moment for me. I realised that virality can sell cars. It was a case of joining the dots. It was a bit risky but it paid off in the end,” she says. “I’d always faked it until I made it but I always believed.”

In 2024, Adan bought the Ashford site and opened it last year, relocating from Rathnew to a location positioned near the motorway. Earlier this year, the Rathnew premises reopened as Ashford Approved.

“It happened naturally. As we’d built such a big platform, we had a big following but we had nothing at the Ashford site in their budget. I wanted something for the whole market but still up to our standards,” she says.

“When you follow us on social media, it’s all about the story. We share live deals with customers because everyone has a story when they buy a car. That has led to more people wanting to buy cars from me because they want to be on the platform.”

Adan’s growing online presence has also opened doors beyond car sales. She has a partnership with Lidl to promote its middle aisle and has hosted numerous events tied to the sector.

For now, she says, the priority remains building the Ashford brand. The company is expanding its YouTube channel to support longer-form storytelling, and Adan is also exploring further physical expansion beyond the two Wicklow sites.

“In the next five years, we want to be a multi-platform dealership in Ireland and the biggest woman-led dealership in Europe in the next decade. I’m looking at a third site at present in Wexford and then in north Dublin.”

At home, the early scepticism has turned into pride, she adds — a shift she illustrates with a recent family moment.

“Mammy is so proud now. I collected her in a Bentley yesterday for lunch. She said if I ever collect her in something else, she won’t come out to me. She’s telling all the family back home about what I’ve done.”