Jen Stevens speaks to Ollwyn Moran, founder of Cognikids, about hard work, raising funds and being ready for growth.

Ollwyn Moran is a testament to perseverance. The inventor, product designer, teacher and neurological developmental therapist has been running her business Cognikids for seven years.

Specialising in high quality baby products that help your baby’s neurological development, Ollwyn is about to take a leap. Having been a one-woman band (with occasional session musicians stepping in to help) she is now on the verge of securing major finance that will send her brand soaring to new heights.

Heading out to sell herself and her business hasn’t been plain sailing for Ollwyn. A woman who is used to putting her head down and getting the job done, she really had to learn how to shout about success in the way that often comes more naturally to men.

“I find that there’s a difference in attitude between men and women in business where women just quietly get on with doing it while men shout loudly about success. It’s the big bravado kind of thing, whereas women just tend to be super practical. We don't need the applause. Men and women definitely do business very, very differently.

“I've learned an awful lot in the last couple of months while fundraising. I have a huge, big vision for the business, but I wasn’t out there with the huge, big vision, I wasn’t articulating it enough for men who were looking at investing to hear us. Now, I have a whole other approach to it, because I've been working with somebody who does a lot of work with VCs and big raises.

“They're like, "My God, your business is brilliant, you've got great customers, you've got good sales." They're not huge, because literally, it's either just been me or me and one other, so it’s been a tiny business, but operating globally. We export to Japan and Korea and are talking to Chinese distributors. Where I’ve just been busy focusing on growth, and that sort of thing I now know that I have to play the game, essentially to get the right zeros on the check.”

It has taken time for Ollwyn to stop saying sorry for being a business that focusses on young children in a world of tech start ups but she doesn’t anymore.

“It took me a long time to actually stop apologising for having a baby business. When I did a couple of propeller programs it was always with other businesses that were tech based and generally male-led. They’re all big ball Barry about it and saying "Oh, and I'm going to be turning over a billion dollars in this time and whatever."

“Then I'd have to get up and pitch and I'd like, "I do developmental clothing for babies." I was literally almost apologising in my pitch but then I realised that actually most of those that were on that course no longer exist, and I still do.”

Taking on finance means giving up a percentage of the business that she has worked so hard to develop but Ollwyn is excited and ready for that to happen.

Without major investment your organic growth can only get you so far and Ollwyn is ready to add to her team and get back to doing what she does best.

“You can grow doing it alone but it’s really small growth. Last year, we lost out on significant number of sales when we had to refuse POs because we hadn't the stock to fulfil them. That's an absolute sickener. Just having POs that you have worked your ass off for, one came in for €150,000, and to have to say no, we don’t have the product. That was awful. There was a whole weekend I deliberated over it. Was there any way that I could make the delivery timeline, anything like that. It's a massive PO to have to say no to. That was the trigger for me. I said there was no way that would happen again, I have to take investors in.

“I'm actually excited because the reason that I'm taking on the investments is to really grow the team and grow it significantly. I have a new CFO coming in which will be brilliant and we'll definitely have a much bigger global footprint as well. That's the plan.

“New products will be coming much faster too because I'll have more time to devote to them, and we'll have some free cash to be able to invest in tooling and the product development and that side of things. To date, it has genuinely been a very organic growth, which I am proud of, I've come so far with very little.

“My commitment is 100% into developing incredible products that work really well and that babies and parents like. Parents are happy in the knowledge that what they’re buying is helping their child’s little hands and their oral development, it's not just another product from a catalogue. I could have 200 products at this stage if that was the case.”

A huge driving force behind Cognikids are Ollwyn’s two sons. She went back to college while working as a schoolteacher when the boys were really young and then started the business, working late into the night. She wants the boys to see that hard work pays off but that it really is hard work.

“I want to show my boys what it’s like. I think kids nowadays have got everything at the touch of a button. When they've got their phone, they have everything they want in the palm of their hand. They don't even have to spend 10 minutes flicking through encyclopaedias to try and find information that was appropriate two years ago when they went into print like we did. What I'm trying to show the boys really is that everything takes hard work. There is no magic bullet to anything.

“I know people in the business world who started and then realised, "Oh this is actually hard work," and it's consistently hard work. It doesn't really get a whole lot easier. Then they'll leave that, and they'll try something else and it's the same. It doesn't really matter what you're actually doing. If you're building your own business, you have to just get up and do it because nobody else will. I want them to see that, "Yes, it's hard work but actually hard work pays off”.”