{"id":204099,"date":"2025-11-28T02:56:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T02:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/204099\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T02:56:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T02:56:10","slug":"smooth-company-founder-aine-kennedy-wins-ey-emerging-entrepreneur-of-the-year-award-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/204099\/","title":{"rendered":"Smooth Company founder \u00c1ine Kennedy wins EY Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year award \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00c1ine Kennedy, the founder of The Smooth Company, was chosen as emerging entrepreneur at the annual EY Entrepreneur of the Year<\/a> (EOY) awards on Thursday evening in the Powerscourt Hotel in Enniskerry..<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely didn\u2019t have a speech ready,\u201d Ms Kennedy admitted upon receiving the award. <\/p>\n

The Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year thanked her parents for letting her take over their home with stock for the Smooth Company, her friends and gave a special shoutout to her grandfather Billy.<\/p>\n

She said it was the \u201cbiggest thing\u201d to get onto the EY Entrepreneur of the Year programme, describing it as \u201csurreal\u201d.<\/p>\n

The company was formed in 2022 based out of its founder\u2019s attic. Ms Kennedy had spent eight years working in the beauty industry, which inspired her first product, the Smooth Stick \u2013 a \u201chair-taming\u201d wand that controls stray hairs without leaving hair hard or making it greasy.<\/p>\n

The announcement was made at the annual EOY awards ceremony at the Powerscourt Hotel in Co Wicklow.<\/p>\n

The business has amassed more than 150 million organic TikTok views, has customers in about 70 countries and has featured in Vogue and Elle magazines. <\/p>\n

Among others, its product range is sold in Brown Thomas, Arnotts, 72 Peter Mark salons, and on 432 l Aer Lingus routes.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Smooth Company\u2019s \u00c1ine Kennedy: \u2018My screen time is outrageous. I don\u2019t have a work-life balance at the moment\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Ms Kennedy previously told The Irish Times that the company\u2019s growth has \u201cscaled through organic online growth, using social media and a unique content strategy to drive brand awareness and online sales direct to our own website\u201d.<\/p>\n

The company generated half of its sales overseas. The US and UK are significant exports markets for the business. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have huge plans for international expansion,\u201d Ms Kennedy said, with its products being produced in Ireland, China, Korea, and other Asian countries, the diversification an effort to mitigate supply chain risks.<\/p>\n

This year, Smooth Company became the first Irish cosmetics line to be stocked in the Netherlands at De Bijenkorf, the high-end department store chain owned by Brown Thomas Arnotts<\/a> parent Selfridges<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ms Kennedy said her products are already one of the bestselling brands in the Brown Thomas beauty section.<\/p>\n

The other finalists in the emerging category of this year\u2019s awards were: Alan Doyle of Aerlytix; Eoin Cluskey of Bread41; Eddie Dillon of CreditLogic; Laura Dowling of fab\u00dc; Caitriona Ryan & Nicola Ralph of Institute of Dermatologists; Liam Dunne of Klearcom; and Aidan & Hilary O\u2019Shea of Otonomee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00c1ine Kennedy, the founder of The Smooth Company, was chosen as emerging entrepreneur at the annual EY Entrepreneur…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,16242,32820,19,17,112320],"class_list":{"0":"post-204099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ey","11":"tag-ey-entrepreneur-of-the-year","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-powerscourt-hotel"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}