Entrepreneur seeks online support for colourful idea

A Cavan entrepreneur and the owner of Ireland’s only crayon-making company is banking on the generosity of the international online community to back her latest innovative product and help make it a colourful reality.

Michelle Rudden founded ‘Funky Crayons’ non-toxic and innovatively shaped crayons in 2013. Since then she has managed it’s rapid growth selling her products to countries around the world from her home kitchen in Rocklands, Cavan Town.

Her latest venture, ‘WicKids’ sees her working on an idea for a birthday candle especially for kids, that can be used as a crayon afterwards rather than being thrown away. However, in order to streamline the production process, the mother of three- James (11), Elliot (7) and Sarah (4)- is seeking capital through crowdfunding website, Kickstarter, in hope of raising enough investment to build an eco-friendly log cabin workshop in the back garden.

“Right now, the business is taking over the kitchen. Balancing a busy family home, three kids and a growing business is not ideal,” says Michelle, who came up with the crayon concept after noticing just how wasteful a product a regular birthday candle really is.

“My problem is lack of space and therefore scale of production. Ideally, I want to install an eco-friendly log cabin in my garden.”

The basic cost of the planned workspace, at around €8,000, Michelle estimates is the same as one year’s rent of the same size of workspace locally. With little working capital, the former full-time carer and now self-employed business owner says it has been understandably difficult to encourage investment from the major financial institutions.

“I have no payslips, no redundancy, no savings, and no capital. I can understand why they’re not exactly rushing to help me. But I’m okay with that. I’m not in a position to go borrowing right now and everything I’ve achieved so far has been done from scratch. I’d much prefer to bide my time, build the business further and then go looking for backing.”

As of Friday last, almost €3,200 of a total €12,000 goal had been pledged by online investors interested in seeing Michelle’s WicKids creations become a reality. She only has until 10:54pm on Thursday, August 20, to reach that ultimate target or receive nothing from her Kickstarter appeal.

“People are loving the product, but they’re not backing it as quickly as I thought they might. I did the Taste of Cavan and the response to Funky Crayons and the WicKids idea was amazing. There was lots of people putting their hands in their pockets and saying they’ll take a set now. But I had to tell them they have to back me first on Kickstarter and then, if it reaches its target I can get to making them.”

She says: “To date I’ve put all of my money and more importantly all of my heart and soul into this business. I have invested bucketloads of ‘sweat equity’ for want of a better word. If the appeal doesn’t reach the target, I don’t get anything. That’s the urgency of it all now. I have to beat that target to get anything.”