Fingal Business Network - Future Ready Fingal: Digital, Sustainable and Export Focused Growth for Small Businesses - Friday 2nd October

Fingal Business Network: Future‑Ready Fingal

Digital, Sustainable and Export‑Focused Growth for Small Businesses

Date: Friday, 2 October 2026 Time: 10:30am – 1:30pm Venue: Crowne Plaza Blanchardstown Hosted by: Noel Davidson

Join Local Enterprise Office Fingal for the October edition of the Fingal Business Network — a practical, energising morning designed to help small business owners and entrepreneurs explore new opportunities in Digitalisation, AI, Sustainability and Export Development.

This event will bring together Fingal businesses for networking, peer learning and direct access to supports that can help you work smarter, become more sustainable and identify new market opportunities.

Event Highlights

• A fireside chat hosted by Noel Davidson with guest speakers Mike Cody, e-volv, Susie Kilcoyne, Locket AI Labs and Lauren McDonald, Lynott Jewellery exploring how digitalisation and AI can support business efficiency, growth and competitiveness.
• Practical insights into sustainability as both a business responsibility and a market opportunity.
• Discussion on export potential and how Irish SMEs can explore new markets for sustainable economic growth
• Dedicated networking time with fellow Fingal business owners and entrepreneurs.
• Lunch and informal networking to continue the conversation.

Meet the Support Clinics

During the event, attendees will have the opportunity to visit dedicated Local Enterprise Office Fingal support booths and clinics, including:

• Digital for Business — explore how digital tools and expert Digital Consulting can help your business improve processes, reach customers and stay competitive.
• Green for Business — get support to identify practical ways to reduce costs, improve efficiency and become more sustainable.
• Market Explorer Grant — learn about support available to help eligible businesses investigate and develop export market opportunities.
• Lean for Business — discover how expert support can help your business improve efficiency, streamline processes, reduce waste and build a stronger foundation for growth.

Our team will be available on the day to guide you towards the most appropriate supports and help you take the next step with your application.

Agenda

Who Should Attend?

This event is ideal for Fingal-based small business owners, entrepreneurs and owner-managers who want to explore practical ways to improve productivity, adopt digital tools, strengthen sustainability and investigate new markets.

Register Your Interest

Places are limited. Join us on Friday, 2 October 2026 at the Crowne Plaza Blanchardstown and connect with the Fingal Business Network community.

Fingal Business Network — Connect. Learn. Grow.

Our Speakers:

Lauren McDonald, Founder, Lynott Jewellery

Lauren is the founder of Lynott Jewellery, has been in retail all her life growing up in the family retail and wholesale clothing business and working in it until 2015, learning the rag trade from the inside.

She has worked on the shop floor, as a marketing intern and as Project Co-ordinator at Brown Thomas Arnotts. She has also worked as a Financial Services Consultant at EY and completed a postgraduate qualification at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. The result is an unusual combination for a founder in this space: a family apprenticeship in wholesale and inventory, operational experience inside the exact department-store group she now trades within, and formal commercial and financial training.

In 2021, at 24, she founded LYNOTT Jewellery. Five years on it operates five retail locations across the Brown Thomas Arnotts group, with a head office and fulfilment centre in Swords and a team spanning retail, operations, digital and merchandising. She is also Director of Seilfí Inventory and Co-Founder of RASBERRI Group, and has been profiled by the Business Post on LYNOTT’s 143% profit growth in 2024.

Mike Cody, Founder, e-volv

Mike is an accomplished sales leader and business strategist, and, in recent years, founder of an energy upgrade business.  His passion for climate action and renewable energy has grown out of his 25+ years in the energy sector. 

Mike is proud to have founded a business to help customers increase energy efficiency, reduce energy costs, and install renewable technology for homes and businesses.  At any given opportunity, he likes to share his experience and journey with other start-ups/business owners to aid others on their journey. 

Mike’s passion for sales and networking shows through in everything he does.  He loves hearing about other start–up journeys, and is always willing to learn from others to further grow his own capability and business.  His style is very open and honest, and he believes authenticity and humility are the winners every day.

Susie Kilcoyne, Founder, Locket AI Labs

Susie Kilcoyne is the founder and CEO of Locket AI Labs and the creator of Sophei, an AI Head of Customer Retention designed to change how ecommerce brands understand and respond to individual customers.

After more than 20 years working across marketing, ecommerce and customer experience, Susie became increasingly frustrated by a fundamental limitation in modern commerce technology: brands have more customer data than ever, but their systems still treat people as segments, journeys and rules.

Sophei takes a different approach. She interprets the signals a brand already has, including purchases, browsing behaviour, conversations, support interactions and customer context, to understand what is happening with each customer individually. She then generates the storefront, landing page, email campaign or retention experience that customer needs next.

At the core of Sophei is a behavioural framework developed by Susie over six years, designed to interpret customer behaviour as a changing situation rather than a series of disconnected events.

Her ambition is simple: to move ecommerce beyond mass personalisation and build a world where every customer can be understood and served individually.

Noel Davidson, MC

Head of Training & Strategic Partnerships at the Entrepreneurs Academy with expertise in the areas of Leadership, Communication Skills, Social Media, E-Marketing, Information Technology, Sales & Marketing, Business Planning & Strategy, Business Models, Productivity and Improvement, Creativity & Innovation, Networking and Business Pitching.

Noel has over 30 years experience in person-facing roles in a number of industries including confectionary, hospitality, horticulture, retail and leisure.