Hens in one basket

“I’m having a ball” is something you’d expect to hear from a bride-to-be at her hen party, not from someone who set up a business targeting that market a mere 12 months ago. But that’s what Kate Hyde said when I asked her how the recession was affecting her online-only business, Henparty.ie.

“This is my best time ever in any job. It’s hard to rationalise that there’s a downturn when the business is doing the best it’s ever done and the money is rolling in. It gives me a feeling of excitement in the pit of my stomach. It’s actually a good time to start something up, because everyone is looking for business – for example, if you’re setting up something online, web developers charge less than they used to,” she says.

Henparty.ie is like the elephant in the room – before Hyde started the website from her spare bedroom in Waterford, it was amazing no one had seen the opportunity. Described as a ‘one-stop hen-party shop’, the site provides all the information you need to organise a hen party, from hotels to restaurants to ideas for the theme to paraphernalia for the bride-to-be. It also acts as a forum where people can share experiences.

Being a bridesmaid herself five times sparked the idea in Hyde’s head. “I couldn’t find any website – Irish, English or American – that catered in a comprehensive way to women organising hen parties. It was a simple idea with great potential – there are 31,000 weddings a year, which means there will be 31,000 hen parties. When you think there’s an average of 15 women at each hen party, each spending €200-€300, this translates into around €120m a year to the Irish economy,” she says.

Having worked in IT previously, Hyde was able to design the site map herself. Before she approached web developers she had all the content written, so all they had to do was build it up from the blueprint.

Since she reached page one of Google, Hyde has noticed her traffic grow and grow – she’s now getting between 20,000 and 30,000 visitors a month. “The Google side of things is critical. I have to maintain the web presence at all times and keep working at its ranking, so the word spreads. I make sure there’s a link to Henparty.ie on other websites – I’m listed on the RTÉ and TV3 sites, which really helps. I now have 200 pages of content, and there are changes to it nearly every day.”

The commercial model involves two revenue streams. Firstly, there’s the online store, which sells everything from dress-up gear to goody bags. Stocking the store wasn’t plain sailing though, Hyde notes. “In the early days I didn’t want to spend a fortune on stock that wasn’t going to sell. When you’re starting from nothing, having a box with €200 worth of gear in it that won’t shift is a big deal. It’s been a ‘suck it and see’ approach. I had to test products and prices to see how customers responded. It’s a vast area and there are so many different ways of doing things, so you have to feel as you go.”

The second revenue stream is advertising, which has been going so well Hyde had to take on two full-time employeesrecently to deal with the demand.

“Before I set up the site there was never anywhere for people to advertise directly to women organising and going to hen parties. In the recession the likes of four-star hotels need hen and stag parties, whereas previously they were dirty words. The site allows them to hit the target market directly without interfering with their mainstream customers.

“There are a lot of one-man shows doing things to generate business through hen parties now and they need a place to advertise. For example, there’s an art teacher who provides a nude male model and there are belly-dancing classes and cocktail-making sessions.”

In the first six months, winning every advertiser was a struggle, Hyde recalls, but after that people started coming to her and she saw a big surge in January.

She’s a big advocate of ‘guerrilla marketing’, in other words not spending any money on it. Before getting married last August she contacted Nationwide and managed to get a small piece on the show. She also appeared on Dragons’ Den, securing €15,000 each from Gavin Duffy and Niall O’Farrell for 20pc of the company. “I didn’t have a burning desire to go on TV, but I did feel that if it went well it would mean getting my brand into thousands of homes. It really paid off. I haven’t spent anything on advertising or marketing.”

The exposure also caught the eye of opportunists and since the programme was aired, a number of other websites targeting hen parties started up, but Hyde isn’t fazed. “The more hen-party websites there are, the stronger the industry will become and mine, as the first dedicated business, will be pushed to the top.”

Hyde’s enthusiasm is infectious and she seems irrepressible. Apart from running the site, she’s managed to also write a book How to Hen Party – the Essential Guide and she plans to launch a site targeting the UK before the end of the year. “I have loads of other ideas for websites. When this one is sucking diesel I’ll get going on them!” she laughs.

This article first appeared in Owner Manager magazine.