Limerick-based start-up Onexu targets young streetwear market

Greg Lynch and Paul Blake are the driving force behind Onexu Clothing, a fledgling Limerick-based streetwear brand aimed at customers aged between 16 and 35. The founders spent two years developing their idea and set up their company just over a year ago. They launched in February and are trading exclusively online.

New clothing start-ups in Ireland are few and far between not least because it's an expensive sector to get into and the competition is fierce. But the founders believe there's a niche for a reasonably-priced streetwear brand with Irish connections and their male, female and unisex clothing ranges include hoodies, joggers, crop tops, leggings and T-shirts.

Before Covid-19 shuttered entertainment venues, Lynch was a full-time DJ and the idea for what has become Onexu was sparked by people asking him where they could buy the snapback caps he wore on stage. “Paul has his own embroidery and print business and he offered to produce the caps instead of me having to import them,” Lynch says.

“Rather than sell them with my own logo I came up with a new design which I put on to different items of clothing and wore around the place to test the reaction. The feedback was incredible. We then looked at what was going on with Irish streetwear and came to the conclusion that there was a very big opportunity there for us.”

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Despite having a clear idea of what their affordable streetwear brand was going to look like, Lynch says they hit numerous bumps on the road as they tried to bring it to fruition.

“One of the main problems was all sorts of delays. There were delays at the factory, delays with the samples and then delays with shipping. We also discovered how really, really expensive it is to get anything done in the clothing industry,” he says. “Then, having finally launched in February, we were hit by coronavirus, which disrupted all of our plans and we had to cancel items like shorts, because they wouldn’t have been here in time.”

Start-up costs

The founders have bootstrapped their start-up costs at about €45,000. In July, Lynch says, they got a real boost when Virgin Media decided to support Onexu with an advertising campaign across its television and social media channels as part of its backing business campaign. Onexu is revenue-generating and all profits are currently being ploughed back into developing the business.

“We want our customers to feel part of a certain lifestyle, something with a sense of exclusiveness, but without having to spend ridiculous money,” Lynch says. “The exclusiveness comes from the fact that, once our items are gone they are gone, and the colour of the x in our logo changes regularly to represent our different collections.

“Almost all streetwear clothing here is imported and very heavily priced. We plan on changing that.”

The company's clothing is designed in Ireland and is currently being made in Turkey. It is also in talks to have items made in Vietnam. However, Covid put paid to the founders' plan to check out the manufacturing in both places first hand. For now, they are working through an agent but still intend to go and see the production facilities for themselves when travel restrictions are lifted.

“Coronavirus really messed things up and created problems with lead times and supply as things like elastic were hard to get,” says Lynch, who is now working in the business full-time. “In the short term we are concentrating on building the brand online, but by next year we would hope to start moving into retail settings and we’re already talking to some shops about stocking our range.

“We’re also looking at how we can develop our brand beyond streetwear into a broader clothing range.”