Building Sonny Bear was no child's play for Lynda
There's probably no greater truism than what you plan is rarely the way things work out, writes Brian Byrne. Especially in business. Which is certainly the case for Lynda Murphy of Brannockstown and her Sonny Bear online boutique for children's clothes.
It's not what she set out to do, but in recent weeks she's glad that she has an online presence at sonnybear.ie for what started out as a wish to have a bricks and mortar shop.
"Since the coronavirus restrictions closed up my usual outlets of markets, the online has become particularly popular with grandparents who want to send their grandchildren gifts for Easter or birthdays, but who can't go out shopping for them."
The clothes range at sonnybear.ie are for babies, girls and boys, with a key underpinning that they are high in style and quality, and made from organic and sustainable materials. "My vision is that you are wearing less, consuming less, and wasting less," she says. "And they are good enough to be always hand-me-downable."
Lynda's two girls are now at college, and when they left for their third level studies she decided that it was time to take a chance on a dream she had nurtured for almost ever.
"I always loved dressing my kids, trying to find something different for them, and I always liked to buy good quality and have less. At the back of my mind I had this little idea that I'd love to have a shop selling children's clothes. I wanted a shop, I didn't want online. I'm a people person and I like meeting people."
But when she took up the opportunity of a Start your own Business course with Kildare Local Enterprise Office, she was told that opening a boutique shop was definitely NOT a good idea. At least not at the start. "The retail climate wasn't right, and Naas wasn't right. They said to go online, see if I could get a following, see if I could establish a market. Then, if that worked, I could later think of a shop."
So she did work on the online — 'a very sharp learning curve'. "Before I started this, I didn't even have a Facebook or an Instagram account. But LEO provided digital marketing courses where you get a lot of good advice. I actually did some of them twice, because the first time around was just too much to take in."
Sonny Bear was launched about nine months ago. The name is derived from Lynda's daughters' ponies, Sonny and Bear. "They used to do eventing, and when they moved away and stopped that, it was another reason for me to get out and get the business going."
Moving from dressing her own children to scouring European trade fairs for the kind of clothes she wanted to sell was a pretty big leap. "But my vision was always to have good quality clothes, the special dress or outfit that could be worn to all special occasions. It's how we used to dress them 20 years ago when we didn't have a fast fashion or the dreadful wastefulness that has come with it."
At those trade fairs, Lynda found that the Scandinavian countries were especially way ahead of things in what she was after. "It's where I found the clothes made of organic cotton, the merino wool, all the natural fibres. The sustainability of these, and my own vision, went hand in hand."
Many of those producers are not 'designer' labels in the 'fast fashion' arena, however well known they might be in the smaller sustainable quality clothing circles. When it came to the online shop, they weren't necessarily what potential customers searched for online. But Lynda persisted, and with networking and promotional skills which had also been taught in the LEO courses, she built up business.
She still needed to satisfy her love of meeting people, of being able to talk directly to customers. So she began opening a popup shop at speciality markets, particularly in Dublin. "When I can talk to people, when they can see and feel the clothes, I sell really well. That they're not designer brands doesn't matter then."
"I had a lot of them lined up for this summer, but they're now gone for very good reasons. Still, maybe out of this, people are going to look more locally, more close to home. My hope is that people will tend to slow down a bit, maybe think a little more about what and where they buy."
Lynda is the first to admit it hasn't been easy, especially as she never had any background in retailing or business. She's enjoying the process and the progress, but 'there have been lots of tears' too. "There have been disappointments, tantrums, lots of 'this is it, I'm throwing in the towel'. Then something nice happens, maybe a bit of positive feedback, and then you think, 'maybe I can make it work'.
"It's been a challenge. But then, what else would I have been doing ... twiddling my thumbs in Brannockstown?"
This article was first published on the Kilcullen Page of the Kildare Nationalist.
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