A rural business success story

Decorating a newborn’s bedroom is an exciting experience, picking the correct colour scheme, decor, crib rocking chair, all in anticipation for a little bundle of joy.

If you haven’t experienced it for yourself, then you may have helped a friend or family member or even watched the scene develop on a cinema screen. Either way, the attention to detail is evident.

Children’s Illustrator Gráinne Dunne also shared this feeling while preparing a room for her now three year old son Tom.

Something in the Redhills woman always told her that she wanted to do children’s illustrations however she found that in her career up until around three years ago “the right project just never really came up”.

As a graphic designer studying in the Institute of Art Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire Gráinne couldn’t quite find what she was looking for in terms of prints to display in her son’s bedroom.

“Like any eager expectant first time mother I was doing up his nursery and I couldn’t find any really good quality, personalised artwork for his bedroom.”

After illustrating the walls of the children’s ward in Cavan and designing her own child’s bedroom, she found her niche in design and started drawing her own path on Adobe Illustrator.

“My friends and family saw the images of the artwork that I had created and they started placing orders with me.

“It just accidentally happened and then it organically grew from there.”

Motly Designs is a combination of her children’s names, twenty month old Emily and three month old Tom. She began with just five or six different themes and now has over forty which include farm, ocean, fairy, floral, jungle and unicorn to name a few. Currently her product offering consists of personalised prints and wall stickers but she is working on expanding this to jungle-themed wardrobe dividers, black and white flashcards for babies of 0-3 months because they “recognise black and white patterns” and daily log books for babies.

“You can track everything from babies’ feeds, nappies and their sleep and any notes that they might have throughout the day.”

The mother of two uses her experience of raising children in the product development at Motly Designs.

“All of the products that I’m bringing out are all things that I would have loved to have had when my kids were babies.

“I had my own notebook and I was just writing down all of the information in the notebook myself.”

The notebook caters for “all of the things you tell yourself ‘I’ll remember that’ but you never do, it just gets wiped from your brain because you’ve so many other things to remember.

“If you write it down, at least you have a log of it somewhere.”

She also said the notepads can act as a keepsake in the future and “a resource” to look back on if you decide to have more children in the future. Having worked in the design industry for 10 years on more website design and product design, The Anglo-Celt enquires if it was easy to move into entrepreneurship.

“I personally think it’s never been easier to start your own business, there’s so many resources, there’s nothing that you can’t learn through Youtube,” she said, adding that ChatGPT is “also an amazing resource for any aspiring entrepreneurs”.

“There’s nothing that can hold you back,” she assures.

Mentioning the Local Enterprise Office in Cavan, she said “there’s a lot of help at your fingertips if you look for it.”

She recently completed the ACORNS programme which is specifically for female entrepreneurs based in rural Ireland. The six month programme pairs participants with a lead entrepreneur. Gráinne was paired with Deirdre McGlone who previously owned Harvey’s Point in Donegal.

“You discuss things from marketing your business, growing your business, how to understand your customer, any kind of highs and lows that you’re having in the business.

“Running a business in rural Ireland can be an isolating thing whereas coming together with this group of other female entrepreneurs, there was nothing that nobody else had tried to figure out,” she explained.

The programme helped the Redhills native expand and automate Motly Designs. She based her business initially on Instagram starting out with around 500 followers which has now grown to 13.7k, she also uses TikTok to advertise her products.

As a budding entrepreneur, one of the main things Gráinne did to grow the business was reach out to Irish influencers such as The Style Fairy, Naomi Clarke a digital creator in Cavan, television and radio presenter Brian Dowling and Armenian choreographer Arthur Gourounlian who married in 2015, Ireland’s Fittest Family coach Anna Geary and blogger, personal stylist and nurse Sinéad De Blogger.

“I would send Irish influencers messages and send them images of personalised artwork with their children’s names on the artwork and ask if I could send them to them.

“They were all very receptive and we’ve had some really great interest in the brand through that.”

She also said Instagram ads were “very helpful” in targeting her audience of females who are aged 25 and above, first time mothers or gift givers to young children and reviewing analytics to see who her returning customers were.

“That’s all kind of stuff that I didn’t know anything about, I kind of learned as I went.

“I didn’t have any idea how it would go but it has been very successful thankfully.”

Up until now, Gráinne has targeted her products to customers in Ireland but now plans to expand across Europe and the UK in the future. Her niché is the personal touch she puts on each product.

“My name in Gráinne, a very Irish name, growing up my name was never on anything,” she said, speaking in terms of personalised products.

“There’s so many unique Irish names that include fadas that are never going to be in mainstream stores whereas our products can be personalised to any name.”