Denise and Lola attended a super event hosted by Leitrim Local Enterprise Office today at the Landmark Hotel, Carrick-on-Shannon. “Stronger Together – Connecting and Empowering Women in Business” was moderated by Ruth Larkin, of Larkin Consultancy Services and Lark Bridal in Athlone. After a wonderful introduction, where Ruth outlined her own business journey, challenges and successes, she introduced the three guest speakers:
First to address the gathering was Anne Dolan is the owner of AnnieDesigns, which creates beautifully designed wedding stationery and AnnieIdeas, which focuses on branding and marketing strategies. From starting her career at Turner Print, she moved to Carrig Donn at the age of 23 to lead the design and creation of branding and promotion across the business before launching her own businesses at the age of 30.
Next Fiona McCormack introduced her business, Farmhouse Bees and Trees. With a background in horticulture, Fiona and her husband Pat initially cultivated trees on their family farm, which they sold bareroot at about 3 years. Pursuing regenerative agriculture, they sowed flowers as a green manure after harvesting the trees, and building on Pat’s beekeeping training at horticultural college, established an apiary. Now they have four aparies, supplying various types of honey and beeswax candles through markets, their online shop and selected retailers.
Finally, Denise Buckley of Sugar Plum Sweetery, and Wholesome Kitchen in Mullingar, talked about her career in retail, what she and her husband learned from setting up Wholesome kitchen and how she applied that when building Sugar Plum Sweetery. She outlined the importance of having a key point of difference to other gift and confectionary providers and how a viral post on Instagram changed their business in an instant.
Afterwards, questions were invited from the floor then there was an hour of networking over soup and sandwiches. Lola and Denise were able to introduce some of the Momentum projects to lots of the women who attended. There was particular interest in the projects which support entrepreneurs and other projects promoting womens financial education and their increased participation in the highly skilled jobs in the workforce
The event was very well attended by more than 100 women, who complemented the great work done by the team at Leitrim LEO for the smooth running of the event and the high calibre of interesting speakers.
