Member Article

Award would be icing on the cake

A business with origins in a Washington mother’s kitchen has come of age with a nomination for a national award.

Now a £2 million turnover business, employing 22 people, Design a Cake - which supplies over 7,000 cake decorating and sugar craft products, tools and ingredients – has been shortlisted in the Retailer of the Year category at the 2014 Cake Masters Awards.

Founded by Craig Houston and Michael Kay 17 years ago, the company, now based on the Crowther Industrial Estate, is one of four - selected from over 600 entrants – which will compete for the honour at the event, staged at the NEC, Birmingham, in November.

Said Craig, 42, “My mother Maureen had built a very successful cake decorating service from home, providing cakes for weddings, birthdays and celebrations. She was receiving more and more orders but found it increasingly difficult to get hold of the quantities of supplies she needed locally.

“Both Michael and I had been working in retail with Dickens since we left school and saw a gap in the market for a store that could offer everything that cake decorators – from professionals to novice home bakers - would need.

“There were a handful of smaller shops and sugar craft stores but they seemed to be more concerned with selling the cakes themselves rather than providing the wide range of products required by hobbyists or skilled decorators. We felt that we could bring something fresher and more dynamic to the market place with a professional, retail focus.”

“It was difficult in those early years, but we had a plan in which we had a lot of faith and the hard work was rewarded as more and more customers started coming through the door.”

The duo’s commitment to seven day opening – a policy which still applies – meant there were no days off for many months as they survived on a £50 a week new business grant from the government.

The shop proved more popular year on year as home baking revived. Today the industry is worth a reported £1.7 billion* and in 2005 Design a Cake moved to a new 5000 square foot unit – double the size of the previous store.

The business was also one of the first to launch online sales – a step which helped drive a dramatic increase in turnover and saw a switch to product supply only and a phasing out of the cake making side of the operation.

Said Michael, 41, “The shop sales were growing rapidly and so we decided to focus our attentions on offering more product lines and growing the mail order side of the business. We had a website from day one but went live with the first internet shop in 2003.

“It had a huge impact and online sales grew turnover by 50% in just three years, becoming an integral part of the business.”

To accommodate this Design a Cake established a 12,000 sq. ft. warehouse and distribution centre to handle all mail order work. It also holds stock for the shop.

Plans for the future include ambitions to open high street outlets in the North East’s major cities.

* Taken from an article on www.foodmanufacture.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Paul Dobbie .