Forget the commute and the childcare - it's possible to exploit that entrepreneurial spirit from the comfort of one's own living room. Sheila Waymantalks to four parents who are taking advantage of the internet to build businesses from home
MIMI AND MYLES DOYLE, WHO RUN MIMITOYS
"When you say you work from home, people think you don't do much," Mimi Doyle says wryly. She is very disciplined in working from 8am to 3pm each day, running a mail order and online toy company, until the children come home. "I am a full-time working mum, but working from home, which is a real luxury."
It was the desire to improve their quality of life that led Mimi and her husband Myles to resign from their jobs in Dublin, sell their home in Terenure, build a house in Summerhill, Co Meath, and start their business four years ago.
A native of Rodez in south-west France, Mimi met Myles while they were students at the College of Marketing and Design in Mountjoy Square. They went on to work in the computer industry. "We enjoyed it until we had family," says Mimi. "Then we thought there was something else out there for us. We had both wanted to run our own business and we wanted a family-friendly environment for us."
With four children, Molly (8), Malachy (7), Madelyne (20 months), and Myles, who arrived on January 2nd, it is perhaps no surprise that they chose a child-related business. Not only do they have their experience as parents, they have testers on hand for the toys.
The couple visit a big toy fair in Germany each February where they select most of their stock for the year. They also visit trade fairs in France and England. Up to now they have mainly catered for children up to the age of five, but their range is expanding to 10-year-olds. They keep all the toys in stock so they can have the orders with customers within two to three days. Their Christmas trade was up 70 per cent on the previous year.
What do they look for in a toy? "Are the children going to enjoy it?" says Mimi. "What is its play value? As a parent will I like having it around? And will they learn something from it?" Mimitoys has a policy of no plastic, no batteries and no guns and only uses suppliers who have signed anti-child-labour codes of practice.
As a parent, Mimi sees the advantage of shopping through a catalogue or website. "You are in control, you don't have the pressure of the child beside you." If you go into a shop with children, you inevitably end up buying more than you intended.
During the week the family is up by 7am, Myles often getting up earlier to put in an hour's work before breakfast. He drives the two older children to the bus for the gaelscoil in Trim and Madelyne goes to a creche. Mimi works until the children come home from school.
"I am very disciplined," she says. "I take half an hour for lunch. You can't work efficiently when they are around." She enjoys the advantages of working from home. "You know the time you have to work, there is no stress from commuting; 100 per cent of your concentration goes on your work, in a nice environment. We are in the middle of the countryside: we have greenery, cows and sheep to look out on."
The disadvantages? "You stay at home all day and you miss meeting people face to face," she says. "If you don't make the effort to get out, you are very housebound." She is now taking Irish classes every Monday night, for the social aspect as well as to try to keep up with the children.
Myles, who used to do a lot of international travel, says: "When things are hard now, I tell myself 'At least you're not in an airport.' " Neither does he miss the office. He likes that he is not dealing with internal politics. "I am dealing with reality. Everything stops with you and there is nowhere to hide.
"From the point of view of the quality of life, we are working longer but within a family environment. Yesterday I was working a 14-hour day until 9pm, but I took two hours out with the kids during that. There is a lot of flexibility."
However, he found he became very solitary in his work. "Mimi would have a better network. I needed more social contact." It's one of the reasons they have set up a second company, Preschool Ireland, supplying furniture, primarily to childcare facilities. "I missed the social side of work until I put myself in a van and visited premises," he explains. With this expansion, they think they will need to start employing people.
Surprisingly, they are running these online businesses without the benefit of broadband. Don't get Myles started on his dealings with Eircom . . . "We have two dial-ups twinned together," he says. "Our biggest inefficiency is entering orders because we don't have broadband." And he's not confident of getting it within the next two years. "We need fixed-line broadband," he says.
However, Myles says he is very happy with the way their lives have turned out. "There is not one day I wake up with regret - but it is hard work."
DARINA LOAKMAN, WHO RUNS IAMAWAHM.COM
Faced with a massive annual childcare bill of €30,000 and a loan to repay after a year in a property business which didn't work out, Darina Loakman was desperate to find a way of making money from home.
Cutting out the creche fees by looking after her three children herself made obvious sense. But, having worked as chief technology officer with ICS Skills, the skills and certification division of the Irish Computer Society, she feared staying at home meant the end of her career.
While trawling the internet at home in Sandycove, Co Dublin, to find ways to earn money, Loakman came across a site for work-at-home mothers (wahms) in the US. She saw it offered good ideas, resources and support to women who wanted to work from home. However, many of the opportunities didn't apply this side of the Atlantic and she saw the potential of starting a site tailored for stay-at-home mothers in Ireland and Britain. So, spending just €20, she set up her website.
"I wanted to filter out the stuff not available here," she says. "Also to have a message board to advise against scams." Some of this advice came from her own experience. "One thing I learnt pretty quickly was never pay to find an opportunity."
Two years on she is delighted with the way the business is going. While she declines to put a figure on what it's worth, she says she has paid off her loan, is sustaining growth and makes a significant contribution to the household income.
"I always thought you needed big capital and equipment to start a business. And then I had to start something and I didn't have either." She has three basic streams of revenue from the site. Firstly there are the advertisers who buy space on the site; secondly Google feeds ads to the site and she is paid when anyone clicks on these; and thirdly there is affiliate marketing, where somebody using her site follows the link to a product mentioned. She also got involved in enterprise training and online mentoring, and has started a weekly podcast with journalist and mother of two, Louise Geaney, on a new social networking site for mothers, www.mumcentric.com.
"The buzzwords are multiple streams of income, that's the way to do it," says Loakman. "I don't think we in Ireland have grasped the global opportunities through the web." She is almost evangelical in her desire to spread the word, through the site, to other women in her position.
Loakman appreciates being able to work around her children. With Brian (nine) and Harry (seven) at school, she puts four-year-old Osgar, into a creche three mornings a week so she can work undisturbed. Her husband, Eddie, a Garda sergeant, works shifts, and is sometimes available during the day to take the children.
She can also log on after the children go to bed. However, to cope with the volume of e-mails generated by the site, Loakman now employs a virtual assistant, Nancy Cunningham, who works from her home in the Mojave Desert in Nevada.
"It's the simple things," Loakman says of the work flexibility. "Now I can volunteer for playground duty at the school."
MAIREAD O'SULLIVAN, WHO RUNS GAGABABY
After the shock of her first baby arriving two months early, film location manager Mairead O'Sullivan had a lot of time to wander around Dublin city centre. She was breast-feeding little Cillian while he was kept in the neonatal unit of the Rotunda Hospital.
The GAA football championship was in full swing and, as a long-standing Dubs fan, she was on the lookout for something for Cillian to wear in his county colours. Although there were outfits for toddlers, there was nothing for babies.
So once Cillian was home in Killester, Mairead made him up a little pale blue outfit, just to annoy some Cork friends she and her husband, David, were due to visit.
"People were asking me 'Where did you get that? Will you make me one?' "
It kicked off two years of market research during which O'Sullivan planned and trained for starting her own online business at home.
In August this year Gagababy was born, initially offering babygros, hats and leather football boots in five county colours. However she says the response was so "phenomenal" that she expanded the range to the colours of 17 counties by mid-November, and hopes to have 32 available by next summer. She also sells six- and 10-inch ash hurleys that can be personalised with a baby's name and date of birth.
Calling herself a "mumtrepreneur", O'Sullivan believes there has never been a better time to be a woman launching a business from home.
"There is so much support and networking out there. It's much better than even just two years ago. Now the fact that I am a wahm [ work at home mum] isn't something to hide but something to promote."
She values the advice she has received from other women in a similar position. "How do I logistically manage this with a two-year-old? That goes hand in hand with business advice, and one is not going to work without the other." The networking can pay off. "Once you become involved in working from home, you try to give business to other women. My graphic artist also works at home. You can understand each other - arrange to talk when the babies are in bed."
With a second baby due in March - carefully planned, she says, for a quiet time in the business - O'Sullivan stresses that Gagababy is not just a hobby. She is passionate about it and is determined to make it work.
"As my husband says, there is a big difference between playing at business and being in business." Apart from the joy of being able to work around the family, and not having to commute, working from home has the added bonus that "you don't have to get dressed in the morning".
She recalls how recently she had arranged an 8am Skype call on the computer with another mother. "She forgot the webcam was on and there she was sitting in her bra and knickers!"