For entrepreneur Sinéad Crowther, receiving government supports was the difference between failure and success for her fledgling start-up. Now she’s seeking an investment of €1 million in her rapidly growing business, and said a new National Enterprise Hub would save a lot of time and energy for entrepreneurs like her.
A mother of four boys, Crowther knows the struggles of getting a two-year-old child to swallow cough syrups. Seeing this gap in the market, she left behind a 20-year career as a pharmaceutical technician to make her child-friendly solution a reality – but she needed help.
“During my years in pharmacy there was never anything specific for children with sore throats and coughs,” she said. “I used to find mothers really distressed coming in because the sticky syrups that were available... [they] couldn’t get the child to take them. There was a really big gap for an effective soothing solution.
“In 2017 I decided to try to pursue this idea – to make a child-friendly throat lozenge. As a mother, I knew it had to be a melt-in-the-mouth solution where there would be no choke hazard, which, as you know, is represented by traditional adult throat lozenges.”
And so, Tonstix was born – even if it was just at the idea stage. As she had no business background, she brought her idea to Enterprise Ireland’s New Frontiers Programme, which equips entrepreneurs with the skills, connections and drive to kick-start a new business. “Even at the idea stage you can go on that course,” Crowther said, “and it helps you flesh out your ideas and build your business plan.
“When we’re born, a survival instinct in babies is your sucking reflex. And we all are actually soothed by that, but you lose that as you get older. So young children love the lollipops, and for the parents – it keeps them quiet! Traditional lollipop sticks are straight and kids tend to like to jam that up their nose and in their ears, so [Tonstix] is like a stick-person, shaped with all-round edges. Some kids just bite the jelly off, but the goodness is still there coating the throat.”
Taking those first steps to set up a new business was really daunting, she said. “But they’re so supportive: they break it down into modules, so it’s one thing at a time which is manageable. Once you start, it doesn’t feel overwhelming. Without the grant aid, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything. It took longer because every time I made progress, I had to apply for another grant, and the applications are long. But I stuck it out, and after three years I won a competitive start fund, which is a €50,000 investment. In the meantime I used financial planning grants, IP grants – and Enterprise Ireland will fund sessions with a consultant.”
If all this sounds a little daunting, it just got a lot easier. The complex grant system has now been simplified with the launch of a new National Enterprise Hub, which acts as a one-stop shop for business owners to research and apply for all government supports. Crowther attended the launch of the hub at Trinity Business School recently, representing one of the many successful entrepreneurs helped along by government supports.
Scaling up
She set up a manufacturing facility in Dundalk and the company now has eight employees. It is seeking an investment of €1 million to aid an exponential expansion. It took five years from concept to Tonstix hitting the shelves two years ago. A pack of six retails at €5.99 and now you can purchase these fun soothers in 1,400 pharmacies in Ireland and 900 stores in the UK. New products are on the way too, with the latest a ginger-flavoured soother to help kids with travel sickness. She said her business was at a key juncture for expansion, and the new hub would be of great use to her in this stage.
“Enterprise Ireland is very supportive in the investment and concept stage in fleshing that out, but this hub is going to be particularly useful for when you’re set up. Instead of you having to research these all independently – which is what had to be done in the past – you’ll just email the hub or make a call, you’ll be asked some questions and they will source and give you a direct link to the person who can help you.
“We experienced 36 per cent growth between year one and year two,” she said, adding the company launched into the UK last October in time for the winter bugs.
With the new National Enterprise Hub, it looks like Enterprise Ireland took its own advice and found a user-friendly solution to kick-start Irish businesses. At the event, held on July 10th, the hub was warmly welcomed by State agencies, departments and industry figures alike, heralding an end to red tape around government supports. Now it’s time for a new generation of entrepreneurs like Crowther to benefit from these supports.