Bizstartup.ie - NewsGagababy.ie - mad for the game

A big fan of the GAA, it was when O’Sullivan had her first baby in 2005 that she detected a gap in the market for GAA county-themed baby clothes.

Her son Cillian was born in the middle of the GAA season and she went looking for a GAA themed babygro for her newborn, but there wasn’t one to be found. So she went home and made one for him.

A journey between Dublin and Cork with Cillian decked out in his Gagababy prototype made O’Sullivan decide to do some further research about whether her idea had business potential.

“The journey was the best market feasibility study I have ever done. People said: ‘Where did you get that? I would love one’," she recalls.

“It was an idea that kept coming back to me. Then one day someone said to me: ‘If you made that product I would buy it’.”

The research process

At night, while her baby was sleeping O’Sullivan, who’s background was in the film industry, would go onto the internet to do research.

She got groups of women together, sent them out product samples and a questionnaire, asking them to test the baby gro on their child.

“I was up and down the country, having cups of tea with people and getting feedback from who I thought would be buying my product.”

Following two years of careful market research, she launched Gagababy.ie in June 2007.

“It took off so quickly by word of mouth. I thought we would get a couple of months’ lead time before things started kicking in, but within a number of days we had a couple of hundred hits to the site per day.

“I launched with five counties in 2007, but within 18 months we had all 32.”

Broadening the Gagababy.ie range

O’Sullivan soon added hurleys to her product range. “We finally found an Irish hurley maker who was using Irish ash. He makes us miniature hurls.

“Not only do we have a huge amount of hurls going abroad they are also used for many other reasons such as for christening gifts. We also do a lot of football boots and they are European-made for kids up to the age of one.

Outside markets important

Currently, 80pc of Gagababy.ie’s market is Irish, but 40pc of this amount is shipped out on people’s behalf.

“That’s a really good marketing tool to find out where the products are going,” says O’Sullivan.

While she was approached by retail outlets to stock her products fairly soon after she launched Gagababy.ie, she held off for about 18 months.

“I wanted to establish that there was even a market there for people who bought from me to sell at wholesale prices. It’s a niche product for a small market audience within Ireland. We will get our volume from the US, Australia and Canada. It’s the organic word-of-mouth marketing that works for us when a product is sent, say, to a christening ceremony in Taiwan.”

Meanwhile Superquinn approached Gagababy.ie this summer. Says O’Sullivan: “They invited us into five of their branches to sell our product. The brand awareness from that has been massive.” 

Photo: The Gagababy.ie range