WOMEN WHO LAUNCH
IN EVERY EDITION OF WMB, WE ARE COMMITTED TO ASSISTING WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS WHO HAVE RECENTLY LAUNCHED INTO THE BUSINESS WORLD

WORDS: LIV MORGAN

Karen Jackson’s Milltown apartment is a good insight into what you should expect from her and her work. The orange walls exude energy and warmth. The abundance of potted plants dotted around the sitting room and her balcony indicate she lives, breathes and sleeps gardening. This vision of greenery could single handedly be providing Ireland’s oxegen supply. “People always expect my balcony to be amazing and its not!” she jokes, but I think this is the perfectionist coming out in her.

Gardini.ie, an online one-stop shop for all your balcony’s needs, is Karen’s most recent business project. (It doesn’t take long to realise this woman is a business-idea generating machine!) She has many strings to her bow; previously running a family fireplace business, she now dabbles in web design, lectures on entrepreneurship in UCD and with a glint in her eye reveals she has three business ideas in the research stages. All of this while vying to make Gardini.ie a success.

Gardini
Gardini.ie was officially established in January 2006. “I had Gardini.ie up and running a few months before that but I really only got involved in it full time myself then. I was halfway through doing an MBA in the Smurfit School of Business when I decided to go for it.”

It was only when Karen found herself doing up her balcony that she spotted an opening in the apartment market, “I had brought up a pot that weighed a tonne and a bag of compost and by the time I was finished I felt like I had done loads of work. In the end it looked tiny and so much effort had gone into it! I just thought if there was only someone I could pay to do all this.” When there wasn’t she decided to do something about it, knowing others could want such a service too. She identified the market as 25-45 year olds, working professionals that don’t know much about gardening but want things to look nice.

Karen never studied horticulture as she wasn’t interested in it academically. She gasps ‘God no!’ when asked if she ever thought she’d go into a business like Gardini.ie. “When I started the business it was a combination of an interest and what I saw as a business opportunity. The apartment market was so glaringly open and as I was one of the market I could easily identify it."

Read more about Karen Jackson and Gardini.ie in the August| September 2007 issue of WMB, subscribe now.

WEBSITE DETAILS
www.Gardini.ie