Saoirse Byrne started Oat & Ember as a side practice in her kitchen in Cork. By the time she decided to take it seriously, she had three Instagram drops behind her, a Notion "shop" page she was sending to friends, and a backlog of orders she was managing in DMs.
What she had
A handful of glaze recipes, a wood-fired kiln in a friend's garden, and a habit of drinking strong tea while she sketched.
What she didn't have
A storefront, a payment integration, a way to ship outside Ireland, or any patience for theme tweaking.
"I knew if I started with the design I'd never finish. I needed something that handled the catalogue for me so I could focus on the photography."
The 72 hours
Friday she answered five questions in the LOAM onboarding flow. Saturday morning the storefront draft was waiting in her inbox — palette pulled from her Instagram, copy that sounded almost too much like her, navigation she'd been wrestling with on Squarespace already done.
Saturday afternoon she shot the latest batch of vessels. Sunday she uploaded photography and the agent rewrote the descriptions to match the shots. Monday morning she opened the soft launch.
By Wednesday she'd taken her first 100 orders.
What she'd do differently
- Set up the email sequences before launching — the agent drafted a 9-touch flow but she didn't enable it for the first week, and she's certain she lost a couple of sales to dropped abandoned-cart emails.
- Use the international shipping defaults from day one — she limited orders to Ireland and the UK initially "to keep it simple" and had to retroactively re-quote a dozen would-be French customers.
Oat & Ember has shipped 1,400 pieces since the relaunch.