Indi and Graham Brooks have built up a successful London-based
cake business. But it hasn't been easy. Working with family, while
rewarding, can be challenging. Here's how these two entrepreneurs
found the recipe for success for their family business.
When serial entrepreneur Graham Brooks met wife Indi, she was
working for a bakery. Brooks convinced her to branch out on her own
and with his support she set up London Cakes.com as a sole trader.
"At first the business was quite low key and focused on taking
individual orders for birthday cakes over the internet," says
Graham. "But before long we had branched into wholesale bread and
cakes. I had a full time-job working in a sales and marketing
position and some mornings I would be up for a 4.30 start
delivering bread, this would then be followed by a full day in the
office."
When the family business began to take off, Graham decided to
leave his day job and become fully involved in London Cakes. It was
a perfect partnership. Indi was a culinary goddess, brimming with
ideas and recipes, while Graham took charge of operations. But the
business model was flawed.
"I remember there were times when Indi would work 36 hours
straight," recalls Graham. "This would have been fine if we were
raking it in but the business was not efficient and often Indi
would earn little more than a pound an hour."
When the opportunity to acquire a coffee shop came up, Indi and
daughter Nikki saw a chance to fulfill a lifelong ambition, but the
acquisition proved more than the family business could handle.
Graham quickly spotted that none of the businesses were performing
as profitably as they should have been.
Overcoming barriers
"We needed to make some changes," explains Graham. "The
businesses were all ticking along nicely but it was very hard work
keeping all the balls in the air. Considering the effort we were
putting in, we should have been making a tidy profit. But we
weren't."
Drastic changes needed to be made. The family sold off the
wholesale bread and cakes side of the business, followed soon after
by the coffee shop and poured all their efforts into Londoncakes.com, the internet side of the
business. Capital was raised through Graham and Indi's side of the
family including aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces.
A now fully streamlined and focused Londoncakes.com went from
strength to strength. The winning combination of Graham's business
expertise and Indi's cake making skills began to reap
dividends.
"We really focused on our USPs," says Graham. "We made
Londoncakes.com all about producing quality birthday cakes with a
quick turnaround. Typically if you place an order online by 2pm we
can get a cake to you anywhere in the country by 12pm the next
day."
However, the family element that had been the strength of the
business was also becoming a weakness.
Family matters
"The family was incredible," says Graham. "Because of the nature
of the work, at times, it was literally a case of all hands to the
pumps. I remember receiving an order from a council that had won an
award and we had to make enough cake to feed 11,000 people. By
12noon the following day everyone got a slice.
"But running a family business is a challenge," he continues.
"My background was corporate so I understood how to run a business.
What I hadn't accounted for was how much of a role the personal and
emotional would come to play in the boardroom."
Graham turned to Business Link in London for advice. He was
primarily looking for someone to offer the type of impartial advice
that he was unable to get from within the family business and was
introduced to adviser Ashley de Safrin.
"Business Link in London was instrumental in the restructuring
of the business," he says. "The coffee shop was not working from a
business perspective but because Indi and Nikki had invested
emotionally in the project, they were not interested in hearing
what they perceived as negative input from me. However, when the
advice to review the investment in the coffee shop came from
Ashley, it was clear that a serious business decision had to be
taken.
"Ashley has also been great at keeping our feet on the ground,
we tend to be rather optimistic in our projections and Ashley will
have no qualms in pulling us up on this optimism if it seems
lacking in substance."
The outcome
Indi, Nikki and Graham still see their adviser once every six
months, a process which, according to Graham, provides them with a
really clear view of how the business is progressing. De Safrin has
also put them in contact with other consultants ranging from
financial advisers to marketing experts.
Graham is now planning the family's exit strategy and expects to
sell the business in the next three years. By 2014, Londoncakes.com
should turn over projected revenues of between £12-15m. Should the
family decide to exit, their investment in Londoncakes.com and
sister company, Cakesnextday.com could prove to be the best move
they ever made.
"Birthday cakes is a fun business to be in," says Graham. "The
people we deal with are happy and, with 30,000 birthdays a day in
London and 1.2 million a week in the UK, the work we do can be
exhausting but also very exciting.
"The international opportunities are particularly exciting," he
adds. "We are able to take an order from a mum in Australia,
deliver the cake to her son in Earls Court and even send Mum back a
picture of a smiling son holding his birthday cake on his
birthday."
And Londoncakes has a celebrity following too. "We've provided
cakes to the Ritz with two hours notice and responded to calls from
Sony who needed a cake for an X Factor contestant on a live show in
a matter of hours," says Graham. "We even have a regular customer
who runs a bar in Old Compton Street which is frequented by
celebrities. When one of his customers gets a number one he gives
us a call and orders a cake for them to celebrate. We recently
delivered four cakes to him, one for each member of JLS. If the
business turns out to be as successful as predicted, it really will
be the icing on the cake."