SHIRLEY'S HERBAL CARE - Shirley Teskey

WORDS: LIV MORGAN

Three things stand out about Shirley Teskey – her love of horses, her fascination of herbs and her attitude of working to live, not living to work. Her business is very much a lifestyle one — she’s doing what she has always done but is now charging for the privilege! She laughs that she fell into ‘Shirley’s Herbal Care’ when she was getting low on funds and that’s as good of a business reason as she’s going to give.

The Limerick native, was always intrigued by the benefits of using herbs and so having followed her husband to Holland she studied traditional herbalism there. The mix of wanting to do something that always interested her and wanting to learn Dutch spurred her on. It was only when she returned to Kerry years later and stumbled down to her local farmer’s market that she realised the business opportunity she had harvested. “I went down with five different ointments in little containers with handwritten labels, a little cart and an umbrella and I actually sold them! So I thought ‘Okay, that’s cashflow and I’ll go with that!!’”.

Initially Shirley’s herbal treatments were for her horses. She ran a riding school in Kenmare and began making up herbal hoof ointments to pass around to her clients. Despite going down a treat she noticed that the passing tourist trade that Summer were far more interested in skin care products and so she decided to focus in on that. However, Shirley paced herself before fully committing to the business idea. When she did give up the riding school it was still only to dabble at the Summer markets, preferring to follow more definite income earners in the Winter such as horse liverys. By the time she reached her third Summer Shirley was confident enough to give up all her other work commitments and concentrate on the herbal care business.

Read more about Women Who Launch- Narrowing the Gender Gap in the August | September 2008 issue of WMB, on newstands now.