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The part Kenny show on news talk with Marter private network during current restrictions. Don't ignore your health concerns. Our expert team is ready to help. But first, we're into our fifth week of news talk supporting local Irish businesses in the lead up to Christmas. Talking to a range of businesses right across the country, it's all thanks to local enterprise officers. Look for local. This Christmas is the mantra. And along with this, we give our listeners a chance to win a voucher every day to spend in the featured local business.

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You can enter by texting local to five three one two six at a cost of 30 cents.

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You can also find all the businesses mentioned at News.com forward slash Christmas gift ideas.

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Well, today we're joined by Louise Stokes, owner of Mullery in Dublin. Good morning, Louise. Hi.

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Good morning. Thank you so much for having me on this morning. I love your name. It's kind of a mixture of Louise and jewelry. Yeah. And I have to put that out there. I did not come up with literally one of my best friends actually set us on a well. I lived in New York and I came home and she was like, a lot of my friends call me Lulu. So she was like, oh, you should call it jewelry.

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And I didn't even get it at the time. I was like, why? So it's really funny. Whenever I'm talking about the name, I definitely do not claim that was my friend Marie that named it. And yeah. So it's funny that it's so it's so known to us, to my myself now. But yeah, that was the combination is the Lui's and the jewelry.

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So it's LULAC or IHI. Dot com is the website and you are jewelers now what sort of stuff do you do. Yeah.

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So we do, we're just we have a boutique on Jotham Street which has been there 13 years. So and well what we do I suppose is we offer a slightly more unique area of jewelry designers from around the world. So very different kind of fashion pieces. And we offer Chuter some say like Paris, London, New York. And then more recently, in the past five or six years, I've started designing and a fashion range and also find jewelry range.

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So we wanted to offer something really that, you know, for gift giving, you can buy something from 50 or 60 euro if you want to mark a special occasion. And our fine jewelry, those pieces that started like a couple of hundred euro. So we kind of offer something for everybody. I suppose the difference is that we come from more of a fashion context. So in terms of like even on our Instagram data jewelry, we'll always shoot the piece on so you can kind of visualize it.

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And I trained in New York, so it was much more from a kind of a designer point of view, you know, people who have like very specific and, you know, ways of working with their jewelry. One of our designers that we have exclusive to us is Monongah Gaffigan, and she works a lot with hand beading. So really, we wanted to offer something that that is for every taste and that's a little bit special. You know, we would do a lot of work with brides and, you know, as I say, special occasions.

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And because we're in our 13th year, we have sort of seen our customers grow along the way with us. So if it's bridesmaids scarf or you're marking an 18th or 16th or whatever it is, that's kind of that that's the sort of central to our business that we want every year, excite our customers and introduce something a little bit new and maybe something they wouldn't have seen before. Okay.

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Now, during the pandemic, of course, it still goes on, but businesses are open. You presumably being non-essential, have to show up.

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How did you fare?

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Yeah, so I suppose that's really interesting because I think everybody's had quite a reflective year. I opened in August 2007, so of course I had six months of boom time and moved home from New York. I was like, oh, why don't I do this before you know that the world is my oyster very soon into opening my business that, you know, worldwide recession has. So I suppose because I've never had a really long run with nothing happening and we were able to adapt, don't get me wrong, it was heart stopping.

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I was like, what do you mean we're going to close? You know, I remember watching and the announcement on TV and what I decided to do, I suppose, was we have always been building this digital business. I'm Loutre Dotcom, and I always knew for me, I mean, there's retail and there's online, but I always saw them going hand in hand. Now, it's not easy for everybody to do. And I'm not saying it's an overnight thing, but we had been building the digital side of the business.

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So I thought, you know what, I'm going to try this. And I actually took a stock, owned my bedroom and I shipped from there and I turned my bedroom into latera office and my team worked remotely and, you know, and we sort of got through it. And, you know, in the time we did within two kilometres, I was dropping things outside people's doors. I was you know, we had we got an amazing service with DHL.

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They pulled up and we were able to continue on the service. And I suppose I tried after I got over the initial shock because it was quite emotional when when I went in and I could see all the retailers. I mean, we are so lucky in Chatham Street. It's like a little family, you know, you've got married. She owns the Westbury Patty Sherry. People have been there, Coastland Costello for years and years. So I don't want to sugarcoat it.

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It was very sort of eerie to be in there and to see shutters down. But, yeah, it was I suppose we looked at it as a challenge and a way to really connect with our customers online and. Yeah. We were very lucky to have that. OK, well, as you say, your footfall now is global rather than simply in Chatham Street and Johnsen's court in that area, Luly Dotcom.

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Hello, Ueli. ERISA luminary Dotcom is at the site and its founder and owner, Louise Stokes. Thank you very much for joining us.