A strong contingent of Mullingar businesswomen will be among those at the National Women’s Enterprise Day at the Mullingar Park Hotel today (Friday ).
Around 300 women from around the country will be attending to develop their contacts and hear words of wisdom from a range of speakers including Jo Fairley, founder of the Green and Black’s chocolate empire.
The conference, which will be opened by Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan is aimed at new, start-up businesses as well as the more established.
Aine Gavigan of Uisneach Catering in Loughnavalley is looking forward to the event and says it’s inspiring to be surrounded by successful businesspeople. She is developing a niche providing healthy lunches to schools, as well as providing corporate and home catering services for events such as parties and weddings. She employs two full time staff and up to eight people on a casual basis. Having previously worked in hotels and catering, she would urge women to think about starting up their own business.
“I love it. I really enjoy it and would encourage anyone. It’s nice to be your own boss, to take a day off when you want to.”
Today’s event “definitely would help your business,” she says, describing the useful advice she got on marketing, accounting and pensions from mentors at previous conferences and adding that “it’s very good for contacts and networking”. She’s grateful for help she got from Westmeath County Enterprise Board, saying she wouldn’t be where she is today without them.
The event is being hosted by city and county enterprise boards.
Christine Charlton of Westmeath CEB says women do have different needs and find it harder to network.
“There’s a great attendance at women’s networking events,” she says, pointing out that it’s less intimidating for them. She chaired last year’s event and agrees that the programme of workshops and the chance to book free one-to-one appointments with specialist mentors makes the day a valuable experience.
There’s an exhibition hall with “a wide range of enterprise support agencies where women can access information” and five small businesses will present their own case study, outlining the problems and difficulties they’ve faced and overcome.
“That went down particularly well last year,” she says.
This year she expects special interest in Krishna Day, a social networking expert who will talk about how to use Twitter and other social networking sites to develop contacts and improve business. She agrees with Aine Gavigan that now is a good time in general for start-up businesses.
“We are getting continuous good ideas and good people at the moment,” she says, adding that inquires to the enterprise board have “gone up very much this year”.
