From her apartment in Brooklyn, New York, former Weston Creek girl now busy mum-of-two, Prue Linehan has come up with a genius no-fuss solution to making kids' clothes last longer.
Her peel-and-stick fabric patches require no sewing or ironing, are washable and instantly cover a stain or add life to a tired piece of clothing.
She released New New Patch in the US two months ago and plans to launch them in Australia later this year.
"You literally just peel it off a sheet like you would a sticker, press it on the fabric where you want the patch and give it a really firm roll with a jar or the back of a spoon and you're done, it's ready to wear," she said.
"It's really exciting. It's so interesting that it didn't exist, because it's such a simple idea."
The journey from idea to product was not so simple, taking three years and endless testing of adhesives, fabrics and designs to find the one combination that worked the best.
A New Yorker for nearly a decade, Prue lives in Greenpoint in Brooklyn, with her husband, fellow Aussie Alex Little, and their sons Townes, four, and Rex, nine months.
Townes can claim some of the credit for his mum coming up with New New Patches.
"He was a very big baby and just took to food, to solids, like nobody's business and was absolutely torturing his clothes. There were blueberries everywhere," Prue said.
"I'm very aware of the clothes that I buy, how I care for them. I love steaming my linens, I dry-clean all my stuff and I get my clothes hemmed and altered. As soon as I had kids, I had no idea how incredibly hard it is to treat their clothes with the same respect.
"So I went looking for a quick fix and couldn't find anything."
Her answer was to come up with her own solution, eventually coming up with her product New New Patches.
"In my apartment, here in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I would make little patch samples and apply them to Townes' actual clothes and the head down to the laundromat to see what stuck and eventually one stayed on and kept staying on," she said.
Prue also found a local manufacturer, put the product through further testing and then ensured it passed all safety regulations to allow its launch into the US market. One of the things Prue is most proud about the sticker patches is that they are helping to keep clothes out of landfill.
"My mission is to make keeping kids' clothes easier than replacing them," she said.
Prue, 38, grew up in Canberra, attending St John Vianney's Primary School, St Clare's College and later the University of Canberra before living in Melbourne and London.
Her father, Bernard Linehan, worked for the health department and her mother, Deborah Sulway, worked at the Museum of Australian Democracy before starting a consulting business.
During her career in New York, Prue has worked across advertising, design and technology with Colossal Media, &Walsh, Cash App and, most recently, Etsy.
Prue's husband, Alex Little, was born in New Zealand and grew up in Ballarat. The couple met in Melbourne, where Alex was focused on a career in advertising.
"On the second date he said, 'Just so you know, I want to move to New York'. And I was like, 'Oh my gosh, that sounds pretty crazy'. In London, I'd had a great time but it had been intense being away from family. I wasn't too sure. But a couple of dates later I thought, 'Actually I think he's pretty great and that could be a really awesome time'," Prue said.
Prue knew as an Australian she could work in America with an E-3 visa, but needed a job offer from a US employer to secure the visa. She was at the time working for a guerrilla marketing company in Melbourne and showed some typical tenacity to get to the Big Apple.
"I borrowed a poster wall from my boss one weekend and handpainted my allegiance - with a brush - to this company called Colossal Media. They're huge over here in terms of hand-painted outdoor advertising. So I filmed myself doing that, sent it off to the founders, they forwarded my email to HR and they offered me a job," she said.
Prue moved to New York in mid-2017 and Alex followed soon after. The couple loves the village feel of Greenpoint and says New York is, in many ways, child-friendly. But they are considering a move back to Australia to be closer to family. That big shift will probably coincide with the launch of New New Patch in Australia, and on to the next chapter.
Prue says it was her mum who showed her how to have an interesting career.
"I grew up watching my mum reinvent herself time and time again. She started as a primary school teacher before becoming a stay-at-home mum, then a guide at Parliament House, later designing children's exhibitions at Old Parliament House, and today runs her own consulting business," she said.
"Watching her taught me that careers don't have to be linear. I love when things look different, and when experiences from one chapter unexpectedly become the foundation for the next.
"Looking back, it's easy to see how my time in advertising, design, operations and technology all came together to help me invent sticker patches. My invention wasn't the result of following a single career path, it was the product of several seemingly unrelated ones colliding."
