International Women's Day - Celebrating female entrepreneurs

Louise Canny

Eloise Jewellery in Kirkcaldy is a unique and very special jewellery business born of a mother-daughter relationship which has now gone on to inspire a granddaughter too.  Three feisty ladies all learning skills from each other through the generations.

As a small girl of just eight years old, Louise Canny would help her mother Ella out with her antiques business.  They would travel the country together in the 1970s, visiting antique fairs, buying, and selling. Louise was soon buying a few tiny items with her pocket money for 50p or a £1 and then managing to clean them up and sell them on for more.  Ella would help and advise all the way.

When Louise was just 15, she left school and opened an antique shop of her own in a building in Kirkcaldy that belonged to her father.  It was going well but a devastating robbery cleaned out most of the stock and it looked like the business would have to close.  However undeterred, Louise happened to see a disused, gypsy-style mobile stall shortly afterwards and thought it might be the ideal place to display what little stock she had left – mainly antique jewellery. She managed to rent the stall, named it “The Strawberry Duck Wagon” and filled it with her products.  The stall did so fantastically well in Kirkcaldy that Louise was able to open her current shop Eloise Jewellery a few years later.  The shop is named after both women – Ella and Louise.  Says Louise: “My shop is a tribute to the wonderful mother who “taught me everything I know”.

Louise’s own daughter Poppy also became involved in Louise’s jewellery business at around eight years old and loved buying and selling with her pocket money which Louise encouraged. Poppy would arrange craft fairs at school and organise fetes with amazing goods she had sourced herself. She has now also gone into business for herself at a very early age with a highly successful online beauty business called “Soaked in Pink” while studying fashion at college, mentored by her mother all the way.

Mother Louise’s coaching and nurturing skills don’t stop with her daughter. She organises the Kirkcaldy High Street market every Friday, starting off with eight traders in 2019 she now has 30. From these market traders, there are now five new shops in the town.  Local MP Neil Hanvey has now nominated Louise for a “Community Connectors” national award for the work she has done to encourage entrepreneurship in the town.

Everyone can browse and buy easily from Eloise Jewellery during lockdown at https://shopappy.com/kirkcaldy/eloise-jewellery

Louise Canny (Right) and Poppy Canny (Left)