Business in Woodley - Internet Success is Icing on the Cake for Rachel

Need-a-Cake in Woodley has just celebrated 10 years of successful cake making and decorating, buoyed up by a dramatic growth in its services to companies looking for something different – and edible – to mark their own special occasions or promotions.

“In the last 18 months, our corporate special event cake service has really taken off,” said Rachel Brown, who originally started Need-a-Cake from home before snapping up nearby retail premises in Ravensbourne Drive to cope with the local demand for birthday and celebration cakes. “The business had been founded on the domestic market but when Comet found our website and ordered 395 celebration cakes for each of their stores, we saw an opportunity.

“The Comet work was a real learning curve as we’d never managed that quantity of cakes before, and we had just two weeks to do it,” she went on.

Now cakes for companies accounts for almost 50 per cent of Need-a-Cake’s overall business, with the other half made up of individual birthday and wedding cakes, cake making classes and sugarcraft supplies and equipment. The Woodley team of five are all qualified to City & Guilds level in sugarcraft and are managed by Dawn Kelley.

Rachel has added a specific corporate section to the Need-a-Cake website to market the company’s corporate capability.

“Our website has been a key factor in bringing in company business,” she added. “It promotes the service to any business in the country looking to celebrate an anniversary, reward customers and employees or add something different to an office party.”

Companies choosing Need-a-Cake include Corgi die-cast models (100 oblong celebration cakes for retailers to mark the company’s 50th anniversary), Mecca Bingo with 750 cup cakes for club members at Wandsworth, independent financial advisers Towry Law and the L & Q Housing Association.

Cup cakes individually iced with the company logo are particularly popular as they can be handed out to customers or staff. The biggest order to date has totalled 5000.

But it has not all been plain sailing. An additional Henley shop failed to bring in enough customers and became an expensive service point for internet orders. Rachel closed this outlet earlier this year to concentrate the business on Woodley, reducing the retail area there to expand the kitchen and provide extra space for cake making, decorating, packing and dispatch.

“Woodley goes from strength-to-strength,” she said. “With an active web presence, we can meet all our challenges from just the one, well equipped site.

“Add to that our established track record and we have everything in place for the next 10 years and more.”

www.needacake.com

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