LEO support helps Acorn acquire funding to develop new products
David Quinn, Timothy Hone and Sarah Quinn of Acorn Educational

LEO support helps Acorn acquire funding to develop new products

A COMPANY who identified a wide gap in the Irish market for innovative educational resources has designed its own range of products specially to cater for those with additional needs.

Acorn Educational’s mission statement reads: “Our main goal is to give every child every opportunity”, and that is exactly what they are aiming to do by designing and developing a range of cost-effective and innovative products for those with additional needs.

One of the founders of the company, Timothy Hone is currently studying for a PhD in engineering at Trinity College.

Speaking about how the idea for Acorn Educational came about, Timothy tells The Echo: “A lot of my studies relate to product development and design, but the main focus of the business is that my partner is a primary school teacher.

“A few years ago, when she initially started, she found that getting innovative educational resources could be very challenging.”

Timothy says when they would travel to the States, they would fill their suitcases with educational toys for the pupils she was teaching, identifying that there was a definite gap in the Irish market for cost-effective resources for teachers.

“We began that journey by importing innovative teaching resources from abroad, and my partner’s brother got involved at that stage as he has a lot of experience in marketing and social media promotion,” said Timothy.

Starting their company, Timothy Hone, Sarah Quinn and David Quinn began mainly by promoting it on Instagram and selling through an online store.

As the company began gaining traction, they were contacted by a number of special needs assistants looking for special needs equipment and resources.

“That’s really where our current journey started,” Timothy explains.

“After doing a bit of market research we found there were a couple of problems with the equipment that was already out there – it was incredibly expensive, and we found that wasn’t fair to the customers.

“We also found that a lot of the products out there were just adapted from other industries, such as a wobble cushion was just a Pilates ball.”

After this research, Timothy says they began developing their own range of cost-effective innovative special needs equipment, which he says will provide every child the best opportunity growing up.

With help from LEO, Acorn Educational has acquired funding to develop a range of seven products.

With help from special needs expert Jessie from Inspired by Autism, the products in the range included an apron for special needs workers with multiple pockets that designed to fit all their tools they need, and a fidget bag which has a range of fidget toys to cater for those with additional needs.

“LEO has been a huge support – the mentors that we were assigned helped us focus our product range and of course their funding has been a massive help in coming up with seven products for our own range,” Timothy tells The Echo.

“They also enrolled us in an export development programme to prepare us for international exportation, so that when we have all our products we can start exporting.”

The company currently consists of three full-time staff, one part-time, one intern, who all work from home, while the packaging and shipping takes place in a warehouse in Citywest.

Speaking about the future hopes for Acorn Educational, Timothy said: “There is a large company over in the States called Lakeshore Learning and they cover the states with really innovative resources, and I think they are ahead of the game, and we would like to see that for Ireland and hopefully to expand and be able to compete internationally.

“We are trying to grow as big as possible,” he concluded.

To find out more about Acorn Educational you can visit their website at https://acorneducational.ie/

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