And The Winners Are....
The winners of Dublin City Enterprise Network for Women Awards 2010 were announced at the final DCEB networking event of the year!
The winner of the 'Most Improved Business Award' was Agata Stoinska, D-Light Studios (as featured on RTE's 'The Model Scouts' series). The prize, presented by Denise Brophy from the DCEB Board, was a Perpetual trophy, €500 cash, a €500 DCEB voucher and a Certificate (Agata is pictured here on the right, receiving her award from Denise).
The winner of the ‘Rising Star’ Award was Deirdre Hardiman, Hepburn Designs.
The prize, again presented by Denise Brophy from the DCEB Board, was a €500 DCEB voucher and a Certificate.
In all, 100 people attended a very lively Networking event for DCEB network members in the Wood Quay venue.
Greg Swift, CEO of Dublin City Enterprise Board, opened the night by welcoming DCEB network members and the speakers.
The night started with two very inspiring talks by Jamie Jenkinson, Director, www.cushnshade.com and Mark Little, Broadcaster, Author and Founder of Storyful.
Jamie Jenkinson pitched successfully on BBC’s Dragons Den. He has successfully launched a consumer product in various international markets with particular penetration and expertise on the North American market. He currently supplies some of the largest retail accounts in America such as Bed Bath & Beyond, Walgreens, Kmart amongst others.
His key message for the attendees was that it was possible to break into the US market but that you need to invest time and effort into putting partnerships in place that make it easy for your customers to source from you.
The US is particularly attractive because of the scale of the market (nearly 100 times the size of the Irish market) and the straightforward business environment. They decided to target the top tier retailers as the effort involved in selling to them is similar to smaller accounts and the potential is much larger. The company is now selling through Kmart and a number of other large retailers. They use local fulfillment companies. Companies often start selling purely through websites, to test the market.
Two useful opportunities to break into the US market are drop shipping services for websites that don’t hold most of their stock and affiliate marketing which is well established in the US.
They are currently developing complementary products that they can bring to the same retail channels. They hope to build a sales force which can handle a number of products in the US market.
Mark Little is the founder of Storyful.com, an online news service which will curate useful content from the noise of social media.
For almost 20 years, he worked for RTE as presenter of the RTE current affairs programme, Prime Time.
He co-founded Storyful.com earlier in 2010 with the objective of setting up a leading source of online news using the expanding amounts of real time news available through social media and other sources. They have completed their seed funding round and are in the process of targeting international news organisations for whom they would be a partner and source of information. Mark talked about the process of moving from a permanent job to being an entrepreneur. He talked about adjusting the goals from the original idea but realizing the importance of sticking to the initial vision as much as possible.
He encouraged other entrepreneurs to be clear about what their vision for their companies: Why did you set up your business to begin with? He also encouraged attendees to ask other more established businesspeople for help – he has found a great spirit of support for start-ups. He also praised the Enterprise Boards, DBIC and other networks for their great support for start-ups.
The DCEB is very grateful to the four judges of the 'Dublin City Enterprise Network for Women Awards' for reviewing the entries and choosing the winners.
The judges were:
Cora Barnes, Managing Director of Three Q Recruitment
Daire Coffey, DCEB Mentor and Management Consultant/Business Coach at Perspectives Consulting
Natalie Kelly, Partner with Anne Brady McQuillans DFK Accountants.
Jackie Prendergast, Consulting Excellence, HR & Management Solutions
Congratulations to Gobnait Collins of Kendlebell, who won a 'Holiday Delight' Hamper in a raffle, worth €115, which was sponsored by the DCEB.
For more information on the Enterprise Network for Women in Dublin, please visit http://www.dceb.ie/networking/enterprise-network-for-women or contact Pauline Logan, the Network Manager, at network@dceb.ie