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20th December 2016
12:10am GMT
After announcing the first competition winner this morning I had the even harder job of picking the 2nd winner and after much deliberation I have gone for carve cases.So what really won me over was this little piece here on the website where the following questions was asked...Is everything really made in Ireland?
Yip!!! I basically do everything. I design, machine, mill, carve, file, sand, oil, wax, varnish, shoot photos, build the web pages, make the tea, sweep the floors, take orders and ship them out; all from one workshop in Kildare, Ireland......Yeah, I can do all that, but I still can't stop my dog Jack from eating wooden iPhone cases!
To see how far the company has gone with such limited resources and with the passion of one person made this a no brainer for me. From the outside Dónal sounds like a really passionate guy and the sort of person I'd love to back and help out. Ideally I'd love to get him focused on making more great products and help him with my marketing knowledge and by opening a few doors. I get the feeling that this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the range of products that could be developed. Hopefully the money can be used to scale the business, add to the team and get people all over the world talking about and buying cases from Carve cases. I for one know I will be buying one!
Done correctly this has the potential to scale because the world is moving towards mobile and I for one hate all the plastic cases out there on the market. You pay up to €500 for a phone so why not protect it with something special.
This competition was all about getting your entry condensed in to one tweet. From the moment I saw this tweet I knew it would be in contention. It was simple, upbeat, to the point, fast and got me excited while showing the passion. It also told me exactly how the money would be spent. If anybody wants to learn about pitching a business then they should watch this video.
@NiallHarbison Hey Niall, here's my last minute entry for #20000yoyos! youtube.com/watch?v=usVRNs…— Dónal Moloney (@carvecases) June 18, 2012
Stay tuned here on the blog for updates about the product and the growth of the business. I'll be going back to food blogging here but will make sure to keep everybody up to date on both new companies. I'm very positive about them both and sure they will both be a huge success and a great help to the local economy. Thanks to the 200+ people who entered and if this goes as well as I hope it does there is no reason why I wouldn't repeat the competition or get it going on a regular basis.
