Tonstix honey jelly pops a Soothing Solution for children’s sore throats

Soothing Solutions manufactures a range of honey jelly pops called Tonstix aimed at providing a children's alternative to lozenges. The idea came to Sinéad Crowther during her 25-year career as a pharmacy technician.

“It’s formulated to melt in a child’s mouth and ease sore throats while removing choke hazards. I was a pharmacy technician since I was 15 years old and there was never a direct equivalent to an adult lozenge,” Crowther told the Business Post.

“Other than syrups, which are messy, nothing was developed specifically for children. The idea to go with something jelly based came from a revolution in multivitamins. They had long been chalky based but then they started being sold as jellies and we couldn’t keep them on the shelves.”

Crowther figured that if she could do a similar offering as an alternative to a lozenge, it too would quickly find an audience. She started Soothing Solutions in 2017 in Dundalk, Co Louth, and the business now has nine staff.

It was early in the journey when she met her co-founder, Denise Lauaki, who brought the business experience Crowther needed to pair with her knowledge of the pharmacy sector.

“I had no money when I started, I was relying on grant aid from Enterprise Ireland at the start. Then I won the competitive start fund in 2019 and that’s when I jacked the pharmacy job in,” Crowther said.

“I met Denise on the New Frontiers programme. She had a tea business and we kept in touch. I had a prototype, I had contacts with pharmacies, but I didn’t know how to scale it. I knew it was a two-woman job and asked Denise to join me.”

Crowther said Enterprise Ireland was very helpful in getting the business up and running.

“I was separated with four children and struggling to pay the mortgage while having challenges with childcare. I started Googling ‘how to make a product from scratch’ and that led me to the New Frontiers programme,” she said.

“In December 2020 we had a seed round. The Redesdale food and beverage fund backed us along with Niall FitzGerald [former Unilever chief executive] and Sean O’Driscoll [former Glen Dimplex chief executive]. When we secured that we received matching funding from Enterprise Ireland.”

In total, Soothing Solutions has raised €1.2 million to date and the business is growing rapidly.

“I knew the exact need. Denise also has four children so we both knew as mothers what parents would want. We made it child friendly, in a way that children would want to receive it. It’s very child focused. It wasn’t a difficult sell to the pharmacies,” Crowther said.

“We’re in 1,400 pharmacies now across Ireland. It’s great to test here. The major chains took it on immediately and we’ve just launched on Amazon UK because there’s a longer lead time to enter the pharmacies there. After that, the next markets will be the UAE or US.”

This Making it Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland