An Indisposable Income
WHEN MAEBH Collins wanted to cut back on her hours as a chartered accountant so that she could have more time with her two young children, a move from her native Birmingham to Ireland seemed to be the answer.
“I was doing crazy hours, from seven in the morning to 10 at night.” In addition, she says: “City-centre Birmingham is not a great place to raise children.”The daughter of two Irish emigrants, she and her English husband, Peter Knight, decided to follow her parents back to Ireland in 2002, in search of a more family-friendly existence.
They moved to Omeath in Co Louth, where they live at the opposite end of the village from her mother and father. She could commute to Belfast where she got a new job as a chartered accountant with KMPG.
Little did they know then that moving house would be only the first step in their journey to a totally new life. A business idea born of personal experience would transform their working lives too.
When she became pregnant with their third child, Collins started to look for the environmentally-friendly baby products she had used in England, such as cloth nappies.
“I was shocked to discover there was only one person in Ireland selling cloth nappies at that time. It’s hard to imagine now, but nobody was doing these in Ireland five years ago.”
More as a hobby than anything else, she set up The Natural Baby Resource and started to sell eco products through the internet. She also ran a stall in a couple of farmers’ markets at the weekends, until the later stages of her pregnancy made that too exhausting.
However, the website really began to take-off. Although she returned part-time to KMPG for a few months after her maternity leave, in November 2005 she made the big leap into running her own business.
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