Dressing up kids is child's play for Olive

It’s not many retail businesses that can boast of staying afloat in these recessionary times but the only children’s boutique in the city is in its 25th year.

Owner Olive Kinneen can’t quite believe that it’s been almost a quarter of a century since she opened Klassy Kids in Cross Street.That street and surrounding streets in the city were practically derelict until a Government tax incentive in the late 1980s encouraged the purchase at what were a series of empty warehouses to turn them into retail or business units.

Olive and her husband Des, both from Loughrea, were living in a townhouse around the corner off Middle Street and they both loved city life.

After the birth of their first child, Zara, Olive decided she wasn’t returning to her civil service job in the Social Welfare Department and after months of enjoying being a first-time mum, she decided she would open a nursery store.

Des had bought the building under the Section 23 scheme and they set about renovating it and then stocking it with baby clothes and some nursery items. That was just coming up to Christmas 25 years ago. At around the same time too they bought their family home in Salthill.

“There wasn’t any other shop specialising in children’s clothes in the city at the time. It was a great novelty but soon after opening, I realised that I hadn’t enough space for the nursery items so I decided to concentrate on clothes.

“And being a first-time mother to a little girl, I loved buying the clothes and obviously there were lots of mothers like me who liked dressing up the children in lovely, bright clothes.

“When I started I didn’t know anything about retail or about planning ahead – right now we are ordering for next winter. But there were some lovely agents working for the clothing companies when I started out and they helped me out and I suppose showed me the way,” says Olive.

There were other shops around the city selling children’s as well as adults’ clothes but when Klassy Kids opened, it was the only boutique for children, from babies to teenagers of up to 16, though Olive has noticed that the biggest part of her sales are for those aged between three and 10.

Back then, she wasn’t long getting to know the retail business and during the boom years she saw an opening for a shop geared at teenagers, K2, on the same street. That has since closed.

She is the first to admit that she hadn’t a long-term plan when she opened Klassy Kids but because it was a specialist shop it has stood the test of time.

It is a credit to Olive as owner of the business to have kept its doors open when there was uncertainty in the economy, but she says steady sales are the key to their success.

“I had great customers, some of them from Donegal and Cork who, when they couldn’t come to Galway themselves, would ring me and order gift boxes to be sent to family and friends having babies. They trusted my judgement and I kept to their budget.

“I remember one woman returned from London and she was disgusted when she saw an outfit on our rails just like one she had bought in Harrods!

“And I still have customers coming back to me now as grandmothers buying for their grandchildren. They are some of my best customers!” she says.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.