Initially starting off in the music business, with the bands ‘Chick’ and ‘Tieranniesaur’, Lucy decided to enter the world of fashion with Elks – a unique children’s clothing brand handmade with Irish fabrics, and sold across Ireland and the UK. She speaks about her journey as an entrepreneur, and gives advice to anyone thinking of starting a business.
High-quality, handmade indigenous fabrics
Elks produce a range of children's clothes out of indigenous fabrics such as tweed, linen and wool. The products are designed by Lucy, and handmade by craftspeople based all around Ireland. Their main range is outerwear: coats, hats, scarves. But we also do beautiful linen dresses and jackets which are ideal for special occasions; we have a babywear range and are working on a small homeware range.
"We have an extremely rich manufacturing and craft history in Ireland, where not so long ago we were once considered the best linen and lace makers worldwide. I want to support the mills and craftspeople that are defying the trend of mass production as I believe that this element of our culture has been largely overlooked and forgotten.
When I tell people about a recent trip to a mill or show a customer a material that we got woven especially for a product, they can’t believe that these capabilities exist in Ireland.
Ironically, roughly 90% of materials made in Ireland are exported mainly to be used by high end companies. It’s no wonder people don’t know about this hidden gem!," says Lucy.
Speaking about moving from the music to clothing business, Lucy says, "Coming from a musical background where you are putting yourself in the limelight, I was always interested in tinkering with clothes and having fun with dressing yourself as another form of self-expression. I think kids, when given the chance to dress themselves every once in a while, can develop this too."
Lucy Clarke of Elks Clothing pictured at the Enterprise Zone run through the Local Enterprise Office network at Showcase in January 2016
Overcoming challenges
As a creative, Lucy says she found the process of forecasts and business plan development quite trying, but very focusing. "It’s lovely to get excited about an idea and believe in it, but I think you need to be prepared to sit down and crunch the data no matter how unfamiliar you are with that end of the process. Another challenge was accepting that something that didn’t sell that I designed needed to be discontinued. Sometimes the ego can get in the way of progress," Lucy says.
Lucy says her business wouldn’t have been able to stay afloat without both the mentoring, training support and grant aid that her Local Enterprise Office (LEO) gave them. Within the first four months of setting up, LEO Dublin City invited us the company be a part of their Showcase Enterprise Zone in the RDS (in 2013) where Elks won a highly commended award.
Asked what advice she has for other entrepreneurs, Lucy had the following advice.
"Contact the Local Enterprise Office Dublin City and talk to them about mentoring.
If you greatly admire someone in Ireland, pick up the phone and contact them or handwrite a letter - that always gets someone’s attention. The great thing about living on an island is that people are generally very supportive of someone who is genuinely trying to start something (not just copying their idea!)"
Finally, Lucy shared these three top tips for business success...
- A mentor gave me great advice when I was starting up: they said don’t just get feedback from family and friends as they might not be objective enough to see the faults in your plans. Try and run your ideas by people who don’t know you too well and by as many people that will listen.
- Something we did later-rather-than-sooner was market research. If I was starting from scratch, I would definitely spend plenty of time on that. It’s really easy to get stuck on a great idea and neglect the market research that you will need to make the idea work.
- A great place to start, is finding a company that is close to what you want to be, and is selling where you want to sell. If you can pinpoint one or two of these, finding out everything you can about these (where they advertise, who their target market is) will be a great help to getting there yourself eventually.
For more information
For more information about Elks, visit their website, or find them on Facebook.
Check out our handy explainer on financial supports for business through the Local Enterprise Office network.
Find your Local Enterprise Office.