Sonya Lennon is an entrepreneur and designer. Along with long-time pal Brendan Courtney, she offered the RTÉ present ‘Off the Rails’ and arrange clothes model Lennon Courtney, which is at present stocked in Dunnes Shops.
Lennon can also be the founding father of WorkEqual, a non-profit group that encourages the financial independence of girls returning to the office. She lives in Dublin together with her associate David Smith and their 17-year-old twins, Evie and Finn.
What monetary impression did the Covid-19 disaster have on you?
Initially, Lennon Courtney was badly affected when our on-line presence got here down from the Dunnes Shops web site. It’s very robust when your enterprise is invisible and you may’t join with the shopper.
There was a retraction of income on a basic stage and we had been very fortunate we didn’t get crucified with it.
Then we regarded on the label, ripped it up, and began once more. We requested: ‘What can we stand for as a model? What’s our objective? Why would anybody spend their hard-earned cash on this when all of that is over?’
We built-in all of the advocacy work that Brendan was doing for older folks and what I used to be doing on inequality and it grew to become a part of who we’re. Ladies bought that.
Out of that got here the podcast, which was a strategy to join our buyer base with our values.
All of it comes all the way down to the Winston Churchill quote, ‘By no means let a great disaster go to waste.’ We doubled down on the podcast, and our third assortment in a row simply bought out at Dunnes.
Have you ever and your loved ones taken steps to deal with the impression of inflation and the power disaster in your family?
One main factor we did as a household throughout Covid was get our house renovation over the road. The optimistic upshot of that’s that our house is now rather more power environment friendly. However we now have seen the rise in the price of feeding a household of 4 – and, on the enterprise, the worth level of the clothes has needed to enhance.
Through the renovation, we had been extremely fortunate to have a tremendous builder and architect with us and we bought a fixed-price contract with the builder, which implies we weren’t dealing with the weekly value will increase that individuals are seeing now.
I can’t even think about the price of doing that renovation now. It took 10 months and we moved again on this summer time.
What’s the costliest place you’ve ever visited?
For my fiftieth birthday, I took my household to India for 3 weeks. I handled them for MY birthday, so I missed a trick there! We spent two weeks in Rajasthan after which went all the way down to Kerala.
It was an enormous funding, however I needed to journey with them. We’d spend 4 or 5 hours in a minibus, with no wifi for the youngsters, so it was a bonding expertise!
Do you continue to carry money?
No, which is horrible. I exploit Apple Pay. And I’ve simply left a resort in Killarney the place I used to be the keynote speaker – and I requested the resort if they may take a tip for my masseuse on my card, they usually couldn’t, and I forgot to come back again with money.
Are you a spender or a saver?
You understand how some folks say they’re an extrovert-acting-introvert? I’m a spending-acting-saver.
I’ve my checking account set as much as routinely put aside cash for financial savings – and in my early 20s I used to be the primary individual I knew of my age who had a pension. I did that although I used to be self-employed and there wouldn’t have been a whole lot of spare money round.
Wanting again, I feel my Dad in all probability influenced me to get a pension. He labored in a financial institution so he all the time had this ‘save half, spend half’ mentality.
What was your greatest monetary killing?
Shopping for a Chanel necklace at an public sale home after a few glasses of wine. That was about ten years in the past and it’s now price six instances greater than what I paid for it.
