It’s hard to imagine the elegant Sally Synnott wearing a loud shirt.
We are sitting in the Pumpkin Patch founder’s newly redecorated Auckland apartment, her latest creative project, where she is advocating throwing taste to the winds and getting in behind Loud Shirt Day, the annual fundraising event for deaf education charity The Hearing House. The businesswoman, whose once small company selling children’s clothing via catalogue now spans over 250 stores and six countries, has been persuaded to give a rare media interview only because of her passion for the charity. She has been on the board of The Hearing House for eight years, following in the footsteps of her father who got involved through cochlear implant pioneer and family friend Sir Patrick Eisdell Moore. The Hearing House teaches deaf children who receive cochlear implants how to listen and speak. The implant is only the first step, Synnott says. “If you just give a kid a cochlear implant and don’t do anything else they’re actually no more likely to speak or hear.” Children can be taught to speak normally and there are impressive success stories. Auckland teenager Joshua Foreman who first received an implant as a toddler won a speech prize and has learned Spanish, Synnott says. “They often get way above the expectations for their age.” Although Pumpkin Patch is no longer her day-to-day baby, the business still gives her a buzz, she says.
The difficult economic times have been positive for the company, she argues.