Kilkenny footwear designer, Nicki Hoyne does not sit on her laurels, ever. Despite achieving enviable success including Best New Brand at the Drapers Footwear Awards 2023 and being shortlisted in the Marie Claire Sustainability Awards 2024, she is always looking for new opportunities.

That she started her footwear brand in 2021 during Covid, only emphasises her will to succeed in an extremely competitive category. Currently, she is in the middle of her first trunk show tour, bringing her signature ‘unique individual style’ to customers in an exclusive but also intimate new way.

A trunk show is a special retail event where a designer shows their collection in a specific location for a limited time. It's an opportunity for customers to view and purchase merchandise and for designers to build a reciprocal relationship with their clients.

So, Nicki is taking to Ireland’s highways for a stylish summer tour that combines, cocktails, conversation, and footwear in a perfect fusion of style and schmoozing. She has completed the first date on her tour (in Cork) is hosting another on Saturday (June 7) at the Chupi flagship store in Powerscourt, Dublin, and is finalising a date for a Kildare Village event. If the formula is successful, she plans to extend it to other locations in the future. 

‘This was on my must do list for 2025,’ Nicki explains. ‘As a direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand, our one pain point is customers want to touch, feel and try on shoes. We’re always asked to do in person events, so we thought, why not go on tour and make it a really lovely luxurious experience in a relaxed and beautiful setting?’

Each trunk show offers guests a curated edit of Nicki Hoyne styles including her new Bon Bon Stud collection, best-selling Oversized Bow flats, new Tassel Flat collection and her trainers. The Bon Bon range for summer includes classic Hoyne silhouettes with tonal domed studs to add a sense of playful sass to summer dressing and features a pump heel, a platform sandal and a flat in pink, red and black colourways.

Since starting her footwear brand, Hoyne has shipped over 9,000 orders to twenty-eight countries, with her Bow collection of 2023 (featuring her viral hit pink bow design) selling out three times.

She then added trainers to her range in 2024, after three years in development, and is wants to introduce her latest Bon Bon designs to customers in the flesh. With over 90% of her sales still via her website, the opportunity to interact with and learn from her customers is vital to her fledgling brand.

Nicki’s entrepreneurship is in her DNA: her dad was an entrepreneur, and business was discussed at home all the time. ‘My family would all be business owners – like did not lick it off the ground. It’s absolutely ingrained in my genetics,’ Nicki laughs.

She bucked the trend by initially studying theatre for three years but then did a degree in entrepreneurship at IADT in Dun Laoghaire. She then pursued a career in marketing which involved working for Elizabeth Arden and Coty in the UK on brands like Mark Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Chloé, and Balenciaga on their perfumes.

In the early 2010s when Instagram was in its infancy, Nicki downloaded the app onto a new iPhone and was immediately struck by the business potential of the platform, and so launched My Shining Armour.

MSA was Hoyne’s first e-commerce business founded in 2014, which sold jewellery, interiors bits, and cool knick-knacks. She says it was ‘like a rocket ship’ as it was one of the first independent e-commerce retailers in Ireland.

Even then her business brain was obvious: ‘I listened a lot to the customer and went where they told me to go,’ she recollects.

After a few phenomenally successful years however Hoyne began to tire of the model and she recalls thinking, ‘Do you not have enough notebooks?’ as the constant consumption began to feel relentless.

‘So, I just said, “I want to do my own thing,” she admits and went ‘back to the drawing-board” to investigate creating a product totally her own.

Shoes became her eventual choice and in 2018 she began developing a range of footwear. Ironically, Covid gave her the opportunity to focus on them. ‘I never felt I had time for anything and was running around like a headless chicken,’ she says in retrospect of her life pre-Covid.

‘If I knew the ins and outs of this whole thing, I would never have started. But saying that, I’ve come so far in four and a half years,’ she adds proudly.

In that time, Nicki has also seen a change in how people are consuming fashion. ‘I also think the customer isn’t looking for luxury, luxury anymore. I think fashion has really changed and people would just prefer to spend their money on their garden, or on their house or on their holidays,’ she observes.

This prioritisation of experience over ownership has also meant that apps like Instagram are not as effective at driving business as before. Hence Nicki's idea to explore actual social interaction as a sales platform rather than relying on social media alone.

‘I wanted to do something more intimate, and we have our VICs (Very Important Clients) – there’s ladies out there and I never thought anyone would own more than two or three pairs of my shoes) but there’s ladies out there with ten or fifteen pairs,’ she says. ‘There’s people that will buy something from every collection.’

‘This year I was like, “I just want to get out and meet people.” It’s so fun to meet people and people are still asking and want to see it in person. So, I was like, “Let’s do something really nice,” she says. ‘I want to have a chat with everyone. I want to be the person helping them try on.’

While Nicki is a sunny optimist, it has not all been plain sailing. She has encountered problems (like late deliveries and criticism for her prices, but she takes these in her stride.

Regarding pricing she says, ‘When people query the price I can go, “I know who made these and they’re really high quality,” she counters. ‘I work so hard, and this is a really good price. I actually have the same quality as a Jimmy Choo or a Louis Vuitton and yet I’m half the price, a third of the price so you’re actually getting a great deal,’ she stresses.

Hoyne makes her trainers in Portugal and her shoes in Spain, both with small family-run factories and says, ‘It’s really a partnership and they’re very much on board with you.’ Because of their EU location and EU labour law she can visit her factories regularly and feels reassured that workers are paid fairly.

Another major issue for Hoyne is thoughtless consumption. ‘I want people to really love what they’re buying … I’m like buy what you love and love it and keep it well, not just buy it and throw it out.’

To explore extending the lifespan of products she is looking at introducing re-sale online and links to people who can repair her shoes too. She is buzzing with plans for the future including a hometown flagship, breaking the UK market and eventually the US.

‘So much has happened in such a short space of time. I’d love just to continue growing and I would love to have a little flagship in Kilkenny and a flagship …  in London and just to keep creating and growing. I feel like I’m only getting started,’ the irrepressible designer says.

See details of Nicki’s trunk shows (ticket €10) and new Bon Bon collection at nickihoyne.com.