The following are the main points from Mallin's talk, at the Dublin City Enterprise Network for Women in September 2006. More...
Liavan’s first start up, Celtic Hampers, started as three friends getting together to find a business idea and involved door to door sales around the country. When the company was bought by Great Universal Stores in 1993. there were 30 year round employees (140 at Christmas) and 8000 agents around the country. Some of the useful lessons from this venture were: o Good to test on a small scale in a local market that was known to them, expand from there. o They got to appreciate the benefits of planning and got a lot better at it. o When they started, they only had annual accounts done but in time worked to a plan against which cashflow, profitability, etc were measured on a regular basis. o While their breakeven level was high (around £1 million) this provided protection against new competitors coming in. Liavan went on to do some travel and she then moved to the US to become involved in a new internet venture – OneMade.com - in the US at the height of the internet stock market phenomenon. The objective was to provide a marketplace for arts and crafts suppliers using the internet. The start up of this company couldn’t have contrasted more with Celtic Hampers! $500,000 seed capital was raised immediately, $5 million after the second round. Her partner was a person with experience of this sector, having previously worked with the founder of e-Bay. However, the market turned out to be a lot harder to develop (very fragmented community) while investor confidence in the internet sector declined. Eventually, the company moved to lower cost offices and pared back plans and managed to continue to trade. She said that of the 27 companies to start with them in a state of the art building in Boston, only two survived that era. The company was eventually sold to AOL for the core technology. The most useful lesson she learned from this venture was the need to test the market – there wasn’t time in this case because the sector was moving so fast. The staff were recruited quickly early on so costs were very high from the beginning and there was huge pressure when the sales didn’t come as expected. She continues to make investments including in Killeen Golf Club and in property. She is now Chairperson for the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) Ireland and there was a lot of interest in how this organisation is working with teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds in particular to give them experience of creating and running a new business. The Dublin City Enterprise Network for Women is a dynamic network of over 120 women who have started up and are running their own businesses in the city of Dublin. Membership costs €100 for 2008. Join today.