Member Article

Gateshead Girl launches The Designer Cake Company

A former Marketing Manager from Gateshead has given up the day job to run her bakery business full time after demand for her specialist cake creations has soared.

Isabelle Bambridge, 35, has spent the past 15 years working in the PR industry in London and the North East but two years ago discovered that she had a talent for cake making and has now turned her back on the PR world to pursue her new business venture named The Designer Cake Company.

Run from Isabelle’s home in Gateshead, The Designer Cake Company specialises in creating edible works of art for all special occasions and recently won an award at the UK Wedding Show for being the Best New Exhibitor.

Originally from Norwich in Norfolk, Isabelle began her career as a professional dancer with The Royal Ballet but a change in direction aged 18 brought her to the North East to study for a degree in Fashion Marketing at Northumbria University.

Following university, Isabelle gained employment with a fashion-based PR agency in London looking after the likes of Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss and Julien MacDonald before permanently relocating to the North East where she has held a number of marketing roles over the past ten years, most recently with Gateshead-based Aspire Technology Solutions.

Of her varied career path, Isabelle said: “I’ve experienced quite a lot considering I’m only 35 and I’ve learnt a lot along the way. I’ve always had a creative streak so have constantly looked for ways to be artistic but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered I had a talent for designing and making cakes.

“My boyfriend has two children and when we met, I helped him make birthday cakes for the boys and realised I was actually pretty good at it. From there, I made cakes for friends and family and the response was incredible. The demand grew and in 2011, I officially launched The Designer Cake Company but still continued to work full time.

“Since then, it has gone a bit crazy and I can’t quite believe it but I’m certainly not complaining. I’ve made a cake for golfer Lee Westwood and even received a call from Mulberry UK after they saw one of my handbag cakes.

“And it’s pretty much all through word of mouth. Given my marketing background, I appreciate the power of social media and therefore started a Facebook page for my business early on in the process which has attracted a lot of my customers and I now have nearly 16,000 Facebook fans from all over the world.

“I get emails every day from cake makers asking me for advice and tips which seems mad given that I consider myself a novice but I do my very best to answer every one of them because we all have to start somewhere. I also write tutorials on how I make certain cakes in an attempt to share my knowledge with others because I know how much I relied on information like that when I was starting out.

“Cake making is booming at the moment thanks to programmes like The Great British Bake Off so it’s a crowded market but I think that my designs and the finish on my cakes are where I can set myself apart. I am a real perfectionist and nothing goes out the door unless it’s absolutely flawless.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by The Designer Cake Company .