Siblings Fuel Their Supplements Ambition
Kylie and William O’Donoghue tell Deanna O’Connor about the inspiration behind their FemFuelz women’s nutritional supplements and how they plan to grow the brand
Sibling entrepreneurs Kylie and William O’Donoghue started their business,
FemFuelz nutritional supplements for women, with little but a loan and some youthful exuberance, while Kylie was still in college. By starting small and growing organically, they’ve built it up to a strong online business and 350 retail listings.
Both studied business in UL, with Will graduating in 2017, and Kylie in 2019. The FemFuelz vision was already underway by the time Kylie (26) left college. With her hurler brother regularly advising her to take supplements to benefit her gym training, she couldn’t find anything in the market that felt targeted to her.
“Will was always trying to educate me on what I should be taking before, during or after exercise, to fuel myself efficiently,” Kylie recalls. “Through that inability to find a brand I felt I could relate to came the idea of a femalebased supplement brand.”
In 2018, they began to research the concept. “We reached out to dieticians, strength and conditioning coaches, and nutritionists to better understand how we could further develop sports nutrition and make them more tailored for the female body and nutritional needs,” Kylie explains
While Kylie grappled with her final year exams, Will got to grips with the business, looking to the Local Enterprise Office for guidance. Coming from an entrepreneurial family it felt natural to them to follow in the footsteps of their parents, who run Elite Home Products, which imports and markets bathroom, kitchen and homeware products from its owned premises at Smithstown Industrial Estate in Shannon, Co. Clare.
After graduating, Will (28) had been working in an aircraft leasing company, while Kylie took up a position in Dell. Once FemFuelz launched in October 2020, Kylie committed to the venture full-time in November with Will following her into the business a few months later.
Kylie recalls the evening the FemFuelz website went live for orders, with the sibling founders just finished work at their day jobs. “It was fairly hectic,” she says, and it underlined the need to commit to the business full-time. “You don’t want to look back and regret not making that call earlier. We wanted to be able to give it our all.”
FemFuelz could not sustain two salaries at the start. It hasn’t been easy, but they admit youth and inexperience has in some ways served them well, giving them a ‘just go for it’ attitude. “Where we’re at, at the minute, our performance month-on-month is consistent and seeing steady growth,” says William. “At the start it was still very much unknown. We could have a busy day or a busy week, but we couldn’t establish trends.”
In January 2021, a time of year when gyms are busy, the uplift in sales looked promising. “Once January came