For Joanne O’Grady, founder of Clever Clogs, a distributor of premium baby and nursery products, it wasn’t enough to design, develop, source and sell sustainable goods. She wanted to run her business from a sustainable building too.
She was right, for many reasons.
Undertaking a full commercial retrofit of its premises in Malahide, Co Dublin last year has boosted energy efficiency, lowered carbon emissions, created a better environment for staff and saved her money.
She did all it with the help of a Business Sustainability Loan from AIB.
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Ever since O’Grady set up Clever Clogs 21 years ago, she has focused on bringing stylish, high‑quality, practical brands from around the world to parents. The company built a reputation for trust, honesty and hands‑on product testing.
It places a strong emphasis on sustainability and ethical manufacturing and has a portfolio of brands that includes UPPAbaby, Clevamama and Swandoo.
A former international marketing executive, O’Grady set up the business in 2005 after the birth of her fourth child, inspired by the beautiful but highly practical nursery goods she encountered while living, working and travelling across the UK, Europe, southeast Asia and Australia. Today Clever Clogs employs 14 people, including four in its UK office.
In 2019 it launched its own brand, Gaia Baby, a range of beautifully designed, sustainable nursery furniture with unique functionality that gives it a competitive edge.
“All along we had lent towards and wanted to list brands that had sustainability as central to their ethos, which was hard to do in the earlier years,” says O’Grady.
“Gaia Baby is the full personification of that, as a nursery furniture brand in which everything is made from real wood and designed to last, ideally through the whole family life cycle.”
As well as Ireland, Gaia Baby now sells across the UK, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and the US.
It encompasses four unique collections, including cribs, cots, dressers, changing stations and wardrobes, as well as accessories such as wraps, carriers, sheets and pillows made from Global Organic Textile Standard certified cotton.
All are available for customers to see in her now beautifully refurbished showroom, part of her multipurpose office and warehouse building.
“The AIB Sustainability Loan helped us with the refurbishment of our premises,” she explains.
“While we had all these sustainable brands and held sustainability as central to our ethos, we were in fact working out of a very creaky, leaky old building which we had moved into in 2016. It had been built in the early 1990s and maintained very well, but we needed to do a full upgrade, including new windows, insulation, and rewiring – everything to make it as energy efficient as possible.”
For as long as she had worked there, the building, which had a very low Ber rating, was cold.
“I literally spent my whole life here freezing, trying to warm up over old fashioned storage heaters. My office was at the front of the building and protruded over the warehouse. Anytime the warehouse door was open I might as well have been sitting in the car park, it was that cold,” she says.
“We put in new floor to ceiling, triple-glazed windows at the front and new windows at the back. We introduced energy efficient lighting, to replace harsh old-fashioned strip lighting and completely opened out upstairs, so it’s now an open plan office,” she explains.
Thanks to proper insulation and an energy efficient smart heating system that keeps the temperature at a constant twenty-one degrees, “it’s nice and warm”, she says. The building today has a toasty B1 Ber rating.
What’s more, everybody just loves coming to work. It’s a really good atmosphere because we also took the opportunity to put in private meeting rooms and a lunch room.”
A huge driver of the retrofit for O’Grady was to create a better work environment for her team. “It’s just so important. We’re recruiting at the moment and I make a point now of inviting people for in-person interviews, so they can see the warm and comfortable atmosphere we have.”
That has boosted staff retention. “It’s one of those intangibles you can’t put a value on but which is huge, especially for SMEs, which often find it difficult to attract and retain staff,” explains O’Grady.
The retrofit has saved money too. “We have just gone through our first winter and, so far, we’re looking at a 30 per cent reduction in our electricity bill,” she says.
With costs down, carbon footprint lowered, and comfort levels up, she now has a building that fully aligns with her brand values.
It’s also one she is now proud to invite customers and suppliers to. “Before I would have been slightly embarrassed,” she says.
The total cost of Clever Clogs’s refurbishment was €250,000, of which €100,000 came from an AIB sustainability loan. “Our AIB relationship manager, Zac, suggested we apply when he called out one day and I told him about our renovation plans,” says O’Grady. “At the time we were hoping we could self-fund but it would have been very difficult in a tight cash flow business. He came up with the suggestion of the AIB Sustainability Loan, which was fantastic, competitive and had an application process that was easy.”
The loan is available to all businesses and comes with a variable interest rate of 4.95 per cent for amounts between €2,000 and €100,000, repayable between one and seven years.
It supports businesses investing in green and transition measures including renewable energy systems, forestry, green buildings, zero-emission vehicles, circular economy and waste management.
For Zac O’Keeffe, O’Grady’s business banking relationship manager at AIB, it was the perfect solution.
“As a leader in sustainable finance, AIB’s business sustainability loan helps businesses transition to a low-carbon economy. The low-rate green loan is available to all businesses including farmers, clubs, trusts and charities seeking to green their operation. Making such changes can help reduce costs for businesses,” he explains.
“Clever Clogs has been a valued AIB customers for over 20 years now and we are proud to have joined and supported them on their growth journey. O’Grady has instilled sustainability at the core of everything Clever Clogs does and when she discussed with us the retrofitting of the Clever Clogs offices, AIB was delighted to be able to recommend the business sustainability loan, meaning we could help support Clever Clogs in the transition to a low carbon economy.”
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