For the latest in our series of editorials focusing on Irish Women in Business, we’re talking to Claire Finnan, who is the co-founder of both the Pregnancy & Baby Fair and Huggy Bloom.
Together she and Jennifer Shaw, along with the help of a few dragons, built up their exhibition and have successfully branched out into luxury nursery furniture.
Here, Claire, in her own words, tells us what success on Dragons’ Den felt like and what 2014 has in store…
Jen and I were both always interested in setting up our own business. We had lots of drive and ambition – we just lacked the direction! When Jen came up with the idea for the Pregnancy & Baby Fair, it was the perfect fit for us. We knew we had the skills needed to run an event like this and the savage work ethic to do all the hard work associated with it.
Jen had just got married and was thinking about starting a family with her husband Anthony. Jen being Jen, wanted to research everything and make sure she had all the knowledge and information she and Anthony needed before they decided to have a baby. She had attended the Wedding Shows in the RDS and found them hugely useful. She began to look for a similar show for babies and found there was none! She was responsible for this great idea and I was the partner she chose to bring on this great adventure with her.
In the beginning, we wanted to grow a business that was sustainable and successful. We soon realised, that we had every important contact in the baby world at our finger tips and hence Huggy Bloom was born. We wanted two successful businesses that would complement each other. We have a national strategy for the SMA Know How Pregnancy & Baby Fair and a global strategy for Huggy Bloom, our furniture collection. The genesis of the Huggy Bloom brand was formed though feedback from retailers and visitors to the Pregnancy & Baby Fair. We began to realise that there was a gap in the market for a high end luxury nursery brand that focused on quality, safety and most importantly on Irish talent!
Dragons Den was exhilarating and daunting. The whole journey from the day of our pitch until we opened the doors of the RDS at our first show was probably the biggest learning experience of our lives. We made some great friends, some big mistakes, had a lot of laughs and some tears! It really put us on the map. We worked incredibly hard preparing for the show and our homework paid off. We will always be very grateful to the Dragons and RTÉ for giving us a great start to our careers in business.
After our first show, we did what the Dragons taught us. We took back full control of the company and built on everything we learned from the first show. We doubled all the Dragons’ money in less than six months… something that has never happened in the history of Dragons’ Den before. We walked away with the Dragons’ backing, support, great contacts and a confidence that we were now serious players in the world of baby and business. We listened to visitors, we listened to exhibitors and sponsors, we listened to our hard working teams and we built on every positive item they relayed to us and most importantly addressed any negative feedback.
We hoped, we prayed and we always believed in ourselves. We have the most amazing families and friends who supported us and helped us reach this level of success. If our friendship is the cornerstone of our success, our supportive families and friends are the foundation. We can’t stress enough how much this support led us to our success. They stand by us, pick us up when we are down, carry us when we are tired, work at our shows and sell our cots!!!
A normal working day doesn’t exist. We both work from home (me in a box room, Jen in a shared playroom with toddler Elle and new born Ivy Rose). We spend a lot of time together, sitting in my box room, selling our show, building our brand and drinking endless cups of tea trying to think of the next great idea. It’s not glamorous, but it’s real. We work incredibly hard into the night while trying to keep a work- life balance. Jen works around her children. Family comes first and that is incredibly important to us.
If you are willing to work really hard, it’s amazing what you can achieve in a playroom with a baby sleeping next to you! Everyone who works with us knows we don’t have a fancy office, loads of staff or flash cars. But we are incredibly good at what we do, we always deliver and we have fantastic working relationships with all our clients. Each year when we open the doors of the Pregnancy & Baby Fair at the RDS we are reminded of the great team we have and what we have achieved together. Also, when we first saw our Huggy Bloom nursery furniture in stores, that was a very proud moment.
Our biggest challenge would have to be learning to switch off! Our minds are constantly on the go! We now take great holidays opposite each other every year and this is a huge help… cocktails by the beach is my yoga!
The best moment has to be before we opened the doors to our first RDS Pregnancy & Baby Fair. It was an incredibly hard year filled with big challenges and a lot of uncertainly. I remember Sean Gallagher giving a little speech to all our exhibitors and sponsors before the doors opened. We looked around, surrounded by all our friends and family who had supported us and for the first time, felt like crying tears of joy. We did it… we achieved what we set out to do. The next thing we knew, the doors opened and we had queues of people waiting to come in. We were bowled over by the support the Irish public gave us.
Our friendship, our business partnership and trust we have built up between us over the years is the cornerstone to our success. We have a huge amount of respect for each other and our different gifts and talents match. We are very grateful that we have not only built an incredibly successful business but also a lifelong friendship. I feel very lucky to count Jen as one of my best friends.
What comes next? On April 5th and 6th 2014,we will throw open the doors of the RDS for the biggest and best ‘SMA Know How Pregnancy & Baby Fair’ yet! We will be down in Cork ‘s City Hall the following week on the 12th and 13th of April for another fantastic show. Also in 2014, we will start to export our Huggy Bloom furniture collection to the UK and start expanding our range. We know 2014 will be our best year yet!
For further details about the Pregnancy & Baby Fair (which will be in Dublin and Cork in April), click here, and for more information on Huggy Bloom (available nationwide through retailers Tony Kealys and Bella Baby), click here.
To suggest other great Irish women to feature in this series, please drop us a line to [email protected]
