START UPS INVENTORS:Necessity is the mother of invention. BRIAN O'CONNELLhears from people who have set up new companies in one of the toughest economic climates imaginable, while Irish inventors tell ÁINE KERRabout their new big ideas
DIGITAL AND ONLINE
Incident Control Room
Before launching his own company last year, David McCarthy was made redundant in 2009 having worked as an environmental health and safety consultant. Based in Cork, his new start-up allows large companies to analyse emergency events more efficiently. It expects to break even in the fourth quarter of this year.Funding has come from personal resources, Cork Enterprise Board and Enterprise Ireland.
“We started in January 2011 and got a customer on board quite early, which was a huge help. What we’re doing is a cloud-based technology that allows large organisations to prepare for and manage their large-scale emergencies efficiently. We’re dealing with things like explosions and we provide an application that allows companies to customise and apply information in a clever way, on an app or an iPad or iPhone. Say, for example, someone was hurt, we bring the supervisor through a series of steps to minimise the severity of the injury of the person affected and the costs to the organisation. We launched in November and we have three paid customers and now have four staff. This year is all about growth for us.”
incidentcontrolroom.com
Irish Lives Remembered
This new company is an online digital memorial service where people can log on and create a memorial for a loved one who has died. The company started last November and charges €30 for an entry. Basically, think Facebook, but with an emphasis on dead persons, while the site also contains a virtual graveyard. Eileen Munnelly worked for Johnston Press in Ireland as an advertising and sales manager for regional titles before taking the leap and starting up her own business. “We make it easy for people to remember their loved ones in an online space,” she says. “I was in media for 15 years and found myself out of work and felt with the Irish dispersed globally, I wanted to provide a platform for people. The business is challenging, I’ll be honest. We’re getting more people from abroad than at home. The Irish aren’t used to this service yet.
“We have just got investors on board and we plan to launch an app this year. It was angel investors and the business is mostly self-funded. I did get a small grant from my local enterprise board. By mid-year we hope to employ a second person.”
irishlivesremembered.com
Touch Communications
Set up last February, this new company aims to provide a mix between social media, digital marketing and public-relations services in the Irish market. Founder Pat Carroll had previously worked with company RendezVous353, which built up a network of Irish persons globally. Carroll noticed a gap in the market in integrating social media into marketing strategies and Touch Communications was born.
Funding for the business has come from a mixture of government start-up funds and personal savings. “With the current economic climate a lot of people are about reinvention so it is a great time to reinvent yourself,” says Carroll. “It is very liberating to work for yourself after many years of working for other organisations. It is going very well, even though the company is only 10 months old.
“I’m doing a lot of work in London and New York and this year I hope to build on international connections and link up great Irish companies with international markets.”
touchcommunications.ie
CHILDREN
BábógBaby
Four years ago husband and wife team Adrian and Karen Devane came up with the idea of an Irish speaking toy. Last year was the first full year in business for BábógBaby, which is a talking teddy bear that teaches 33 words of Irish to toddlers and children. AIB gave the company a small SME start-up loan of €100,000, and that enabled the company to make initial orders. The bank continues to lend support to the business.
Adrian worked for 13 years in film and television production, working on Ballykissangeland the Disney film King Arthuramong others. "2011 was a busy year for us, with sales in excess of 20,000 teddy bears," he says. "We also launched an app, and with the success TG4 have commissioned a 10-part TV series based on the teddy called BB agus Bella. This June will see the series launch and we will also launch three new language bears in Welsh, Scots Gaelic and English for the UK market. We're in about 14 states in the US at the moment and we also want to expand that across America. If we can achieve that, it should grow really well. I'm very optimistic about the year ahead." babogbaby.com
CLOTHING
MotionFox
This new start-up aims to supply and make high-visibility safety wear a little more stylish and fashionable. Its products include the FlashBk, an expandable patent-pending hi-vis vest that can cover the wearer and their bag, or it can be worn as normal. The company has qualified for the final of a €10,000 start-up competition, with the winner chosen by public vote.
Prior to founding his company, Rob Quigley studied for a PHD in computer science. “We noticed a huge increase in cycling and as a cyclist I wanted a better choice of hi-vis activewear,” he says. “I wanted activewear that was fun as well as functional. We launched online five weeks before Christmas but plan to expand into retail shops into 2012. Our products are all Irish designed and manufactured overseas. This year we are very optimistic. We had a great response coming up to Christmas time and we are also bringing out a range of fun high-vis clothing for kids in the near future.”
motionfox.com
Irish Bobbles
This company set up in early 2011 and launched its range of Gaelic football and hurling bobble head figurines before Christmas on the Late Late Toy Show. The company make figurines of every county team in Ireland and each figure is hand painted. Co-owner Mark Carey worked in retail as manager of a music store before setting up his company. The funding has come through a bank loan and one private investor.
“We are only starting to kick off in the last few weeks,” he says. “We’re looking forward to the Showcase Expo in the RDS when we’ll get a sense of how buyers react to the product. Our plan is to have a big launch in early February and we’re branching out into a lot of different sports. I’d recommend anyone starting out getting in touch with their local enterprise board. Last August we took on our first employee, the Tipperary hurler Conor O’Mahony, who is heading up our sales and marketing department.”
irishbobbles.com
LEGAL
Healy O’Connor Solicitors
In a sector where many are struggling, this new legal company has its first full year in trading behind it. The practice currently employs six persons. The main areas of speciality are litigation, debt collection, personal injuries, and employment, criminal and family law. It also provides a niche service to credit-union clients and has recently opened an office in Dublin.
The firm was founded by Maurice O’Connor and Shane Healy, both solicitors who had worked in Cork for a number of years. The funding for the business came mainly from personal reserves. “The key for us is that we came after all the difficulties with banks and after the crash,” says Maurice O’Connor. “We had a clear run at the business and came into it at the low end of the market when value for money was very important. We didn’t have the loans or the baggage from the last 10 years so we were able to go at everything with a fresh attitude. The reason it is working out is that we are constantly reviewing our costs. The second thing is that we have to ensure for the most part we get paid. Even with the best of intentions, we are still finding it very hard to get paid for the work we have done. We steer away from hourly billing. Instead, we are more into giving people a set cost and sticking to that.” hoc.ie
BO’C
Steri-Orb
Ann-Marie Durkin was a secondary school home-economics teacher when her first baby was born prematurely. With that event came the discovery that there were no pre-sterilised soothers or portable baby-bottle sterilisers available for busy parents. Instead, sterilisation could take up to 15 minutes each time.
This set off a chain of events that ended with Durkin setting up a company called Steri-Orb, helped by Enterprise Ireland and other private investors.
The Steri Soother was a world first, and the company got orders from South Africa, the UK, Iran, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. And now Durkin's portable compact baby-bottle steriliser is about to plough the same path internationally.
"It's very compact and you can sterilise a bottle anywhere in 30 seconds in one cycle. It's very fast and efficient and it means you don't have to go preparing six bottles because you're going out for the day," says Durkin. "It has mass appeal."
Vitfiz
How many people take note of the exercises their physiotherapist recommends to help them get better? As few as 30 per cent, according to research. Most patients listen to the instructions but subsequently lose motivation and never fully or properly complete the prescribed regime.
Those who do persist often have the wrong posture and move their limbs in the wrong direction. Vitfiz, however, will soon be changing this, using sensor-gaming technology and a simple piece of velcro to ensure patients do their exercises correctly.
Under the Vitfiz plan, a physiotherapist will first use a sensor to take a template of the patient doing exercises, before sending them home with an accelerometer on their smart phone, which tracks progress. The phone is strapped to the affected limb, and as the patient exercises, the avatar on the screen will tell them if they are doing the prescribed exercises correctly.
Vitfiz co-founder Brian Caulfield, a physiotherapist and UCD lecturer, says he simply wanted his research to help those recovering from operations. That was in 2008, when very few people had a smart phone, which meant he had to take a leap of faith and trust that in time they would become the phone of choice. "When I started doing research, I could have churned out academic papers continually but I just felt it was never likely to change the world," he says.
Physical recovery is a thriving area with massive potential - its current market value in the US, UK and Ireland is around €2.4 billion per annum. And there is a waiting customer base if Caulfield can finalise the application by the end of 2012. Between north American and Europe alone there are 500,000 therapists, dealing with in the order of 200 million clients per year.
Sure Wash
Sleepless nights interspersed with days of frenetic energy have been the norm lately for two men driven by one simple aim: to train people to wash their hands thoroughly. "Some days are just rolling with you and other days, you are pulling your hair out and trying to figure out how we get to the next stage. There are always frustrations, but we feel we are moving, albeit slowly, in the right direction," says Sean Bay of Sure Wash.
Bay and Gerard Lacey claim to have found the answer to containing contagious viruses in hospitals and reducing high absenteeism rates in large companies using a mobile machine based on gaming technology. And they have the patents in Europe and the US to prove that they have come up with something special.
Their invention centres on something akin to Wii for hand hygiene - an interactive video camera capturing hand movements in real time, motion sensors and a step-by-step check list of tasks. Except this one is based on seven strict poses drawn up by the World Health Organisation (WHO). There is real-time feedback, as the Wii-like device checks whether all seven poses have been completed.
When the pair first discussed the product during a coffee break in Smurfit College five years ago, the statistics before them were stark. Some 140,000 people die in Europe every year because of an infection picked up in hospital. Up to 50 per cent of these are transferred by hand.
The stats on the other side were equally stunning: improved hand hygiene can reduce Healthcare Associated Infections (HCAIs) by 50 per cent and absenteeism by up to 40 per cent in large, highly populated companies.
"Nobody has anything like this . . . that's a buzz, that from a small office in Dublin, we can take this worldwide. There is nothing stopping us," says Bay. "We have a huge capacity to earn value for the country and build a reputation for reaching out, as a small Irish company, to work very well in a bigger environment."
Radisens Diagnostics
More than one billion blood tests are ordered annually worldwide. Rather than wait days for the results, one Cork-based inventor, Jerry O'Brien, is developing a system where a finger-prick sample of blood can be tested and analysed within minutes in a GP's surgery.
It could be a game-changer in the health system and the European Space Agency (ESA) and Enterprise Ireland are among those acutely aware of the potential. O'Brien is now the recipient of a $1 million contract with the ESA to develop a blood-testing device for use by astronauts on board the International Space Station and on various human spaceflight missions.
Ultimately, the device designed by Radisens Diagnostics will enable a GP to test patients for diabetes, liver and kidney damage, and thyroid conditions in their surgery with instant results. It's hoped future developments will enable the diagnosis of heart attacks, early stage cancers such as prostate and ovarian, and HIV and other viruses.
In effect, a small matchbox-sized device can match a unit costing hospitals upwards of half a million euro. And such is the level of innovation under O'Brien's watch that the company has 11 patents pending or granted.
Since 2007, developing the product has been a fulltime task. "There are always frustrations but I was never close to throwing in the towel. In my previous career, I was exiled away from Cork for 15 years and it took a Cork woman to bring me back.
"At the time I had job offers internationally in Boston and London and Hong Kong and just felt, it's taken me all this time to get back to Cork, I'm not leaving. I always knew I wanted to do something of my own," says O'Brien.
With offices in Boston and Cork, the company's staff has grown to 12, but will double again this year. By 2013, up to 35 people will be employed in research and development, as O'Leary bids to begin clinical trials in 2013 and launch into Europe in 2014. From there, the hope is that the small device will appear in every physician's office, emergency room, intensive care unit and acute care setting. AK
Bagsitt.com
Jill Aston's company Cake Craft once baked speciality cakes for Westlife, U2 and Gay Byrne. Then, in 2006, with children reared and mortgage paid, Aston took off for a year-long backpacking trip around the world.
She returned with a new product idea, secured an Irish patent and applied for an international patent, which is expected in 2013.
As she crossed continents, countries and cultures, Aston noticed one thing: men and women could not be parted from their handbags, laptop cases and briefcases. They got in the way, inconvenienced owners and workers, were easily stolen, easily muddied and easily forgotten.
She returned to Ireland with multiple drawings and the idea for BagSitt.com. This is a hat stand for bags, if you like, with two strong arms with tamperproof clips allowing bags to be kept close and on view at all times. An A5 advertising spot is pitched on top for the business to advertise their products or for a third party to rent as advertising space.
"I'm working on a five-year plan because as soon as we can get the formula right in Ireland, we can take it further. This has global appeal," says Aston of her gadget, which recently made its debut in Fitzpatrick's Castle Hotel in south Co Dublin.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Enterprise Board was among the first to spot the marketability of what Aston was proposing.
"And the interest not only from the public but from well-placed and high-end restaurants has been beyond my wildest dreams," she says. AK
Ballyshonog Farm Foods
Farmer Colin Hadden decided in 2011 to go direct to market with his Wicklow lamb, spotting a niche for chefs looking for local quality produce. By the end of 2011, the business had grown to encompass a butcher shop and food hall based close to the farm in Tinahely, Co Wicklow. The plan for this year is to expand the number of restaurants supplied from 10 to 30, and launch an online shop. Emma O'Sullivan, sales director, had worked for Cuisine De France before joining and helping to start the business. Unable to receive funding from banks, the business was set up on private resources.
"It has been tough but there is definitely a market in promoting local produce," says O'Sullivan.
"Pre-Christmas we struggled to keep up with demand so anticipating that demand was a big challenge. We will know how to plan better this year. Launching online is our big project this year. We now have 15 people employed, excluding ourselves, so we've effectively doubled our anticipated workforce. Our experience shows it is all do-able if you keep the right attitude." ballyshonogfarm.ie
BO'C
DC Store
'This new retail shop opened to the public in November 2011 on Cross Street in Galway city by husband and wife team John and Grainne Deely. This was one of the first DC stores in Europe and deals exclusively in the well-known brand of action sports and lifestyle clothing. The stock includes a large range of footwear from toddlers upwards as well as outdoor clothing. The plan is for the store to act as hub for the brand in Ireland, and an outdoor BMX and skating bowl is nearing completion in Moycullen village, with the support of DC and the shop.
"I had previously worked for Guinness while at college and we have been retailers for 12 years in Galway and had been building a relationship with DC over that time," says John Deely. "The major hurdle to overcome to make the project happen was trying to keep everything going while we sought funding. We were turned down by one bank and kept going until Bank of Ireland and the local credit union came on board. It took a huge amount of work. We have an official launch party on Valentines weekend and then a follow-on event in conjunction with the Volvo Ocean Race. The DC project has taught me that getting the right player on board and sharing some of the risk is going to be the way forward. The support we found now with DC is helping with my other suppliers, landlords and others. It can be done, if everyone is realistic about what is achievable."
origin24.com BO'C
WD Distribution
Two Irish businessmen, John Curtin and Conor Barry, set up a new distribution company last year to help distribute a product that originated in the US, called Noho: The Hangover Defence. The formula is in liquid form and is made from vitamins and nutrients to help prevent hangovers. The pair decided to import more than 200 units, having spotted it on a television programme, to test the market. Since then the company has gone from strength to strength, selling 1,000 units per day, with plans to start operating in the UK market this year. Curtin previously worked in corporate finance and private equity, mainly in Dublin and the Middle East, while Conor Barry worked in capital markets. Funding came from the partners' own resources.
"We saw this opportunity and it started off as a side project and it completely took on a life of its own," says John Curtin. "We have sold in something like 22 counties and well as several countries in Europe and Australia. This year we plan to go nationwide in Ireland. We'll expand and also be hiring a number of people." nohodrink.ie
BO'C
