This month: Tim Slatter from www.thecakestore. com explains how going to the internet saved his business.

GC:Tell me about the Business
TS: It's really a traditional bakery shop in Sydenham, and we employ 25 people. My dad had raging successes in the 70s and 80s when everybody was buying that type of thing. It has been running across the generations for 70 years, but it's only since 2001 that we launched the Cake Store as a new company.

GC: So, what was the business problem you were trying to solve?
TS: My brother and I joined in about the mid-80s and then throughout the 90s we got absolutely clobbered by the supermarkets and changing eating habits - fresh cream cakes went out the window. The overheads were massive so we decided to do something the supermarkets couldn't compete in which was celebration cakes - it would be too hard work for them to do that.

GC:How did you go about finding the solution?
TS: In 2001, we took on a cake decorator. He'd been with us a couple of years and was very dynamic with new ideas. We realised there had to be promotion. The technical problem was how to supply this nationally.

GC:Was it important to go national rather than local?
TS: We thought really big at first, but then realised there would be enough business within the M25 and London area to be successful.

GC: What made you think the web was the way forward?
TS: I've always been into computers. I started with [accounting software company] Sage, which brought out a web trader's system. I went right down that avenue but it was very much designed for businessto- business, whereas every consumer is new to us and they all want something different. Sage had a website showing what other people had done and I realised one of them had this much more dynamic website. I wondered how they'd changed it so much and got round restrictions in the software. So I rang them and they told me they were using Actinic, so I started looking into it and realised how simple it was to use. This was important because I didn't go to college or anything, and instead I trained as a chef.

GC: What did you actually have to do?
TS: We refitted the shop completely and I bought the software. We had to take pictures of all the celebration cakes [which involved buying a new digital camera] and uploaded them to the Actinic website. My brother started studying professional photography. He bought all the books, because a consistent image is so important. [When buying the software] I did a search on the web and found people who hosted as well. I used a company called Techlan. We'd already set up the cakestore.com website with Sage, so I had to transfer the name to their control. They supplied the website and all had to do was upload. This was in October 2001.

GC:How long did the process take?
TS: From the start, with the Sage version, it took about two years, but we're forever changing it. The Actinic segment took about six months, but then I did a crash course in Dreamweaver to get the home page to look really good. The customer clicks on that and is taken to another site, which is the Actinic site.

GC: What benefits have you noticed so far?
TS: Colossal benefits. We get about eight cake orders a day confirmed through the system, and a massive amount of orders through the freephone. We sell to a lot of housewives who are still a bit sceptical about whether they should use their credit card number on the internet. Also, they all want something quite bespoke - they'll see our fairy castle cake and they'll think "my little girl's into dolls" or something, and they want that put on top. So they order by phone. Web customers come to collect their cakes from our newly refurbished store and they buy additional products. It's completely a virtuous circle.

GC: Do you think the business would have survived without the technology?
TS: No. It put us on a level playing field with large competitors, and we're just a small business. Jane Asher had huge public awareness of the cakes she did, but automatically by promoting ourselves on the web, we're in that market.

GC:How did you market your site?
TS: We got loads of free advertising. We contacted the press. For example, when Peter Andre was in the jungle, we did a cake for the Sun newspaper in the shape of Jordan's cleavage to be taken to Peter. The Sun loved it, so they took it to him and presented it to him. Also, we've done "how to make your own Christmas cake" columns. We ring the press with ideas and they're receptive. We also pay £150 per year for someone to continue to submit our site to search engines.

GC:How much did the system cost?
TS: It was £400 for the software when we bought it, but it's about £700 now. Including hosting, the camera and everything, we spent £3,000.

GC:Has it paid for itself and how long did this take?
TS: Within about six months we started getting orders through, so I'd say about six months before we realised we were really onto something.