#FollowVelvetCloud

Join us and #FollowVelvetCloud’s co-founder, and part of husband & wife team, Aisling Flanagan and their specialist sheep dairy business Velvet Cloud in Co Mayo just outside the town of Claremorris. Read AIsling’s multiple founder journey from a service led business to making sheeps milk products and building it out as a successful e-commerce business during Covid19.

How would you describe yourself in 6 words or less?

Determined, fun, always learning

What prompted you to start your business?

We lived and worked in Italy and then France for over a decade. While there we noticed a wide and varied amount of sheep’s milk products on sale and wondered why that wasn’t the case here in Ireland. On returning to Ireland to live on Michael’s family sheep farm, we investigated the potential further.

The market trends such as an increased interest in the gut microbiome, an increasing number of intolerances, a greater demand for sustainable and locally produced products and an increasing demand for dairy alternatives, all pointed to an opportunity.

Sheep’s milk has a higher nutritional profile than cow’s milk, is thicker and creamier, and suits many who feel they may be sensitive to cow dairy. We made some trial batches of sheep’s milk yogurt and passed them around to chefs who were really encouraging, so we decided to give it a go.

Five years later we now sell sheep’s yogurt milk and cheese, under the brand Velvet Cloud. Velvet Cloud yogurt can be found in 100 stores around Ireland and on the menus of many of the best restaurants in the country. Since Covid we are selling our full range, online where the list of our stockists is also available.

Tell us a little bit more about you?

I grew up in Dunlaorie Co Dublin, but was always a country girl at heart, spending every summer on my uncle’s family farm. I’ve four children ranging from 22 to 14, love animals, nature and good food and wine. I  spent 10 years out of Ireland living and working in Milan and then Paris, a few quick years back in Dublin and now settled as a farmer’s wife, with an indellible entrepreneurial spirit, on our farm in Co. Mayo.

I’ve a degree in Agricultural Science and an MBA, and a qualified executive and personal coach. My career has always been in marketing and brand communications, having worked for Bord Bia, HJ Heinz and Ogilvy Advertising. I set up my own training and facilitating business ARMS Marketing over 20 years ago which I am still running whilst we re-invest in the growth of Velvet Cloud. I also lecture at the UCD School of Business in marketing and sales.

I strongly believe that the most important skill you will develop in life is the ability to communicate and network well and I love reading, listening and learning about anything in this and related areas.

Can you share your female founder journey with us?

I’m not a stranger to entrepreneurship having left a permanent pensionable job to found ARMS Marketing offering training and facilitating services to Irish SMEs in sales and marketing. As well as working with larger more established businesses, we’ve trained and mentored hundreds of start-ups over the years, in our work for various accelerator programs.  I love the buzz of getting to understand a market, work on a strategy, and then seeing it successfully executed.

Setting up and building Velvet Cloud however has been a serious adrenaline rush the last few years. As a product-based business it’s very different to my other service business and it has been a steep but exciting learning curve.  We lost 50% of the business overnight last year when the restaurant sector was closed due to Covid ! We set up an e-commerce shop and finished out 2020 in growth which we are proud of and 2021 is looking promising. While I’ve been preaching and teaching about digital communications and brand building, now I have to put my money and more importantly time, where my mouth is. The e-commerce space really excites me I am learning every day, and feel we are only starting.

What is it like being part of the AwakenHub community?

Its really helpful and motivating to have a supportive likeminded community of women founders who understand the benefits of being part of a network that is focussed on paying it forward for the benefit of all.

Have you an ‘ask’ which we can share with fellow #Awakenhubbers

To help us build the brand awareness. If they know anyone who feels they are sensitive to cow dairy, doesn’t like the strong taste of goat’s products or doesn’t like the processed nature and carbon footprint of plant-based alternatives.  Or if they know anyone who just likes cooking with really delicious high-quality ingredients, telling them about us would be really great.   So if #Awakenhubbers could just folluw us and share across social media that would mean a lot.

 Twitter: VelvetCloud_ie

 Instagram: velvetcloud.ie_

Facebook: velvetcloudsheepsmilk

LinkedIn : Velvet Cloud

Website: Velvet Cloud