Business Plus

Soothe Operators

Soothing Solutions’ award-winning founders Sinéad Crowther and Denise Lauaki have been successful in raising funds to push their business forward, but not without having to endure some mansplaini­ng along the way, writes

- Gerry Byrne

Former stockbroke­r John Conroy’s Redesdale Food and Beverage Fund has announced five investment­s since its launch in 2021. One of them is lollipop producer Soothing Solutions, a start-up with accumulate­d losses of €720,000 at the end of 2022. Unusually, apart from food and food technology criteria, Redesdale has nominated firms led by women as prime investment targets. Soothing Solutions and Thanks Plants, the fund’s two investment­s in 2022, are both female-led.

Redesdale’s female sympathies was certainly noted by Soothing Solutions co-founder, Sinéad Crowther. She is a mother of four kids, while business partner Denise Lauaki also has four children. At a meeting with one otherwise keen potential investor, the founders had to endure very pointed questionin­g about the domestic side of their lives.

According to Crowther: “This investor asked about our childcare situation, and did we understand that our business was going to entail a heavy workload? How could we facilitate that because we have eight children between us? Redesdale never once asked us any personal questions like that. They evaluated our propositio­n based on its merit, and that really stood out.”

When seeking investment capital, the business women sometimes had difficulty getting direct answers from other potential investors. “We would ask a question that required a very concise answer but resulted in a lot of mansplaini­ng, the whole big picture, before the answer would come,” Crowther recalls. “They didn’t appear to be sure that we fully understood the questions we were asking.

“I suppose a lot of women have to just

sit back and smile, and there was quite a bit of that. Not in a rude or disrespect­ful way, it was just at times that we felt that people imagine they need to explain things to you as a woman.”

As the producer of retail products, Soothing Solutions bucks the trend of the usual VC focus on tech and pharma. John Conroy explains that Soothing Solutions ticks many of fund’s boxes. Among them is some successful marketing. Soothing Solutions produces a lollipop to help ease the childhood discomfort of sore throat and coughs. After launch, the company was listed in many Irish pharmacy chains, including Boots.

Ahead of the scheduled UK launch, Boots in the UK heard about the Tonstix lollipop and said they wanted it too. WH Smith wanted to stock another product, a lollipop to help children cope with ear pain due to cabin pressure on aircraft. From an early stage, Soothing Solutions was running to standstill as far as the UK market was concerned.

As a former pharmaceut­ical technician, Sinéad Crowther faced the constant demands of parents seeking a more long-lasting treatment for sore throats and coughs in small children. The impact of traditiona­l cough syrup is short-lived, and many children don’t like its taste.

Crowther figured that what parents and their kids required was something where the active ingredient treats the throat for longer and, unlike cough lozenges, does not have a choking risk.

Early on Crowther hit on using jelly (of jelly baby consistenc­y) as a vehicle for her active ingredient. And it wasn’t long before she realised that she also needed a mechanism which prevented a child from swallowing the jelly too quickly before it could bathe its tonsils with soothing balm. This train of thought led to the concept of a lollipop that the child could suck, but not chew or swallow quickly. And it wasn’t long before she realised that the stick itself would be another choking hazard with small children.

All of which led her to a gingerbrea­d man-shaped lollipop stick, the outstretch­ed arms and legs of which prevented it passing a child’s lips. Putting the concept together in a factory-ready fashion was not so simple. By this stage, she had quit her job to care for an injured child. She refined the concept at her kitchen table and researched available small business assistance.

“If you have no money and want to progress, you have no choice but to pursue the grants,” she recalls. “I became very good at filling in forms.”

The entreprene­ur undertook the Foodworks tutoring and mentoring programme run jointly by Bord Bia, Enterprise Ireland and Teagasc, in addition to Enterprise Ireland’s New Frontiers programme. With all the technical problems solved, Crowther and Lauaki started the search for start-up finance, aiming for around €500,000.

John Stapleton, their mentor in the Foodworks programme, is a serial food entreprene­ur and introduced Crowther and Lauaki to John Conroy and the Redesdale Fund. “We didn’t realise that this fund existed. We obviously had impressed Stapleton and so here we are now,” says Crowther.

In October 2023, Sinéad Crowther was named the Enterprise Ireland High-Potential Start-Up (HPSU) Founder of the Year for 2023.

Joe Healy, EI divisional manager, described Crowther as “an excellent example of a founder with a clear

pathway to scaling globally and the potential to become a world leader in her field”.

As well as the invention smarts, Crowther has proved adept at financing her venture through its early stages. In the period from inception in July 2017 to the end of 2021, start-up trading losses at Soothing Solutions Ltd were €260,000. The company was funded with €110,000 in equity raised from four investors in March 2021 and €320,000 in bank borrowings.

The bank loan was repaid after Redesdale injected €850,000 in convertibl­e loan notes in March 2022.

 ?? ?? MAXWELL
Founder of the year Sinéad Crowther receiving her award from Enterprise Ireland divisional manager Joe Healy
MAXWELL Founder of the year Sinéad Crowther receiving her award from Enterprise Ireland divisional manager Joe Healy
 ?? ?? Soothing Solutions founders Sinéad Crowther and Denise Lauaki
Soothing Solutions founders Sinéad Crowther and Denise Lauaki

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