When Jennifer Shaw and Claire Finnan saw a gap in the market they jumped in to fill it and their Pregnancy Baby Fair got off to a flying start, helped by a trip to the Dragon's Den
IT MIGHT SEEM astonishing in a country like Ireland but the first ever Pregnancy Baby Fair to be held in Ireland occurred on October 9th and 10th, 2010 in the RDS in Dublin. Considering that we have fairs for everything else from agricultural machinery to weddings, and from motors to homeopathic medicines you’d have thought that in a country where 75,000 babies were born in 2008 alone someone would have come up with the idea of a pregnancy and baby show.
Well they did, but not until last year when Jennifer Shaw and Claire Finnan, two work colleagues in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, came together to begin organising one. “I got married in August 2009 and lots of my friends were asking me when I was going to have a baby,” Jennifer Shaw explains. “I’m a great planner and organiser. Everything I do has to be planned so I went online to see what was there to help you plan for a baby; what do you need to buy? What preparations do you need to make at home? All that sort of thing. And I found there was nowhere to go.”
That gave her the idea of providing expectant parents with some form of resource to help them plan for the happy event. After that she joined forces with her friend Claire and the Pregnancy Baby Fair plan evolved from there.
“Claire and I get on really well together,” says Shaw. “I have a degree in human resources and business and her qualification is in communications and PR so we have complementary skills as well. Our idea was to create a one-stop-shop for expectant parents in the form of an exhibition. I had been to a lot of wedding fairs before I got married so I knew what we were trying to achieve.”
Once they had their idea fully formed they went to their local Bank of Ireland branch on Merrion Road. "The manager there was really helpful. She set up the business account for us and gave us a lot of good advice. Bank of Ireland was sponsoring Dragons' Denon RTÉ at the time and it was looking for entrants, and we decided to go in for it. We applied and were accepted and got through the first round which got us onto the show."
The pair are immensely proud of their success on the show. "We made history by becoming the first business to get investments from all five dragons," Shaw recalls. "We got four on board on the night and then Gavin Duffy announced a few weeks later on The Late Late Showthat he was signing up as well. We were in with the dragons for two and a half hours and we convinced them all that the exhibition was a good idea."
By that stage they had already booked their first fair for October and were trying to sell stands at it.
"It was tough selling the stands at the beginning because no one had heard of us and we couldn't tell them about Dragon's Denuntil the show was broadcast. As soon as the show went out on air in April the phone never stopped ringing. Dragon's Denreally opened doors for us. The dragons also gave us advice but let us make our own decisions and use our own ideas. They gave us great feedback and they always listened to us."
The show was fully booked within months and it attracted 15,000 people to the Main Hall in the RDS.
“We already have the second show booked for April 9th and 10th next yearand demand for stands has been so high that we have had to move to a bigger venue,” Shaw says. “We will be in the Simmonscourt Pavilion this time. Everyone who took part in the first show has signed up for this one and we have a lot of new big names as well. I hope to be there myself but I am expecting my first baby on April 7th.”
