Two success stories
HEALTHY BENEFITS
Taking part in the Seedcorn competition has definitely been a success for Rosemary Cowan and her company, Puro Fruit Smoothies of Dundonald. Not only did she win the €20,000 Northern Ireland regional award but her company has gone from strength to strength winning new customers in both Britain and Ireland.
With a background in senior management in financial services she found herself at a loose end when Standard Life closed down its Northern Ireland branch. She initially looked at the idea of setting up a smoothie bar but decided that a better move would be to look to supply the retail trade with fruit smoothies which replicated the freshness and goodness of the ones available in smoothie bars.
She set up the company in October 2005 and since then has designed, created and produced the award-winning Puro smoothie product range. The brand has readily gained market acceptance and is now available in such premium blue chip outlets as Costa Coffee and Avoca in Ireland to Fortnum & Mason in London.
"Puro's competitive edge against established players is two-fold: we use natural fresh fruit, versus puree or concentrate, and retain a high level of vitamin C because we kill bacteria through a superior new high-pressure process as opposed to the traditional pasteurisation technique," says Cowan.
She says the 2007 Seedcorn Competition gave her the impetus to prepare a detailed business plan which was professionally appraised, while also giving her the opportunity to meet potential advisers and investors.
"The most challenging aspect about the competition was articulating the business plan in a detailed professional format and giving a formal presentation," she adds.
"But it was all worth it - the prize money was very helpful and the increased awareness of the brand has definitely led to increased sales."
BUILDING PRODUCTIVITY
The 2007 Seedcorn Competition emerging company winner was established as a result of the personal experiences of its founders. "My co-founder Damian O'Brien and I had both worked with Baltimore Technologies and had experience of the crazy exciting days with that company," says Openplain managing director Jon Mulligan.
"At one stage Damian was trying to manage teams on three continents, but it was very difficult to see who was doing what and to monitor productivity. This gave us the idea to develop a product which would monitor what people are doing, how they are spending their time and help them become more productive. The idea is to share the information between both the staff and management so that individuals become empowered to be more productive," he explains.
Having spent more than two years developing the product Mulligan and O'Brien established Openplain in 2006. The product, JournalLive.com, is an online work-time journal that records all applications and documents worked on, surfing, e-mail and instant messenger activity as well as breaks, meetings, and start and finish times.
"In tests it increases staff productivity levels by as much as 13 per cent," Mulligan adds.
Seedcorn has been good for the company - the Dublin Seed Capital Fund has agreed to invest €200,000 in the company and private investors have agreed to a further €250,000.
"Before we won raising investment meant having to make the difficult phone calls. Afterwards the investors were calling us," says Mulligan.
