We talk to Chloë O'Connor of Love Letters, an award-winning wedding stationery company.

Based in Dublin City Centre, Love Letters design and produce luxurious handcrafted wedding stationery for brides in Ireland, the UK and the US.

Having taken over the business in June 2013, Chloë is working to maintain the exceptional quality of the product and service, as well as enhancing the offering to brides and grooms to be.


Chloë – tell us about the  ‘Love Letters’ story - how did you go about setting up your own business?

I’m a great believer in serendipity and that success is made possible when luck and opportunity collide. This is what happened to me last April, when I was working in a full time job at Dublin Theatre Festival. I heard that Love Letters was for sale and something about it peaked my interest!  

I had my own packaging business before and I suppose the hunger never left me, so I explored this opportunity more. Having worked in packaging, I understand paper quality and printing, so I could tell that the product was of the highest standard. After performing due diligence, I jumped at the chance to run my own business again and by 4th June 2013, I was in the driving seat.

Tell us about your recent award win and how has it benefited your business so far?

Love Letters won the Weddings Online Best Wedding Supplier Website for 2014 at the beginning of February. While we offer a handmade, bespoke product and as personalized a service as our customers want, our entire store is online which means we can sell worldwide very easily as well as diversify products if needs be.  

We are very excited about 2014; we plan to live up to our award and promise to introduce new wedding products and other services for special occasions such as milestone birthdays, christenings, communions as well as corporate events. It is really important that we won the award for our site as we know that Irish consumers love buying online and we would like them to buy Irish.

Love Letters prides itself on good service – how do you achieve this?

By listening to what the customer really wants. We moved into Dublin city centre at the end of 2013 and since then we have been open by appointment every Saturday. We have found this really works and caters to people who work 9-5 as well as those who don’t. We have been really busy every Saturday and we love meeting our brides and grooms to be in person.

As well as that we offer consultation on the design of your stationery order. If you like different elements of two or more of our designs and would like to combine them, our design team can work with you to create your own bespoke wedding invitations. We are also introducing a service where we can design your stationery with you using materials that we have. We have made some beautiful, completely unique new cards with our brides input in the past year.

We provide solutions and our main focus is to help find the perfect stationery for all our customers.

You have a lot of international clients from the US and UK - do you find their tastes differ from Irish brides?

We find that no matter where the brides and grooms come from, that when they are shopping with Love Letters Wedding Stationery they are looking for something timeless and elegant.  

What are your ‘Top Tips’ for people thinking of starting a new business in Dublin in 2014?

Don’t be afraid to take risks.
Believe in yourself and have a good network of support, including people who have more experience than you.
Have integrity.
Know your numbers.
Talk to other people in your chosen industry.


Tell us about your involvement in the ‘Accelerate’ Programme? Do you find it beneficial?  

I am participating on the Accelerate Programme offered by the Enterprise Boards in Dublin since January 2014. Already, this has proven to be immensely helpful. The team that are running the programme are professional and knowledgeable, and it’s great to be part of a network of other business owners at a similar stage in business to me.

The way the course is structured is really helpful to me with monthly day long sessions with the group and a one to one mentoring session in between. I have already set new goals and initiated new practices in my business. I am really excited about the rest of this programme.


What important lessons have you learned, since starting Love Letters?  

I have learned it is imperative to have integrity and to be an expert in your field. Having a timeline for your goals is also really helpful as it forces you to visualize your achievements and set targets. It is important to realize you can’t do everything at once! You need to know your numbers and you need to focus on the things you are good at and hire people to do the things you cannot do in order to grow your business.


How has the Dublin City Enterprise Board (DCEB) helped your business so far?

I have been very fortunate that I am a recipient of an Online Trading Voucher from the DCEB; this has enabled me to work on my blog, which needs to be completely rethought, relaunched and integrated into our main website.

I am working with Aisling Nelson from Three Thought Bubbles, a member of the DCEB women’s network. As well as this I have been able to enhance our listing on weddingsonline, Ireland’s largest online wedding portal and I am working with some developers to integrate the rest of my social media tools into my site.

Which businessperson (at home or abroad) do you admire most and why?  

There are a lot of business people I admire. One close to my heart is my father, James O’Connor of TS O’Connor & Son Ltd, who I worked with for 6 years and also set up and ran a business with him specializing in reusable packaging. He has been in business for forty years. I learned about integrity, perseverance, humility and hard work from him.

We were in a book together about Irish entrepreneurs called “That’ll Never Work” alongside eleven other Irish entrepreneurs including Norah Casey, who I also greatly admire. I like her can do attitude and her no-nonsense approach to things. She champions women in business and offers superb support to women entrepreneurs in Irish Tatler Magazine, on her radio show and in person.

Our thanks to Chloë O'Connor for taking part in this interview. For more information on Love Letters and to view their full range of products, please visit http://loveletters.ie