Would you swap a six-figure salary to launch a cake decorating magazine? With the publishing industry facing tough times and newsstands already boasting a variety of baking titles, it might not seem like an obvious step.
Yet for Rosie Mazumder, a banker by training, it’s proved a savvy means of turning a hobby into both a successful business, and thriving community. “I had always wanted to have my own business and loved watching things like The Apprentice on TV, but could never really come up with an idea that would generate a profit,” she says.
But, while working in the city, Mazumder kept her creative eye roaming for enterprising ideas. Then, in 2011, she became interested in baking and cake decoration. “It was right at the beginning of the whole baking boom, when cupcakes were really in. I loved it, but couldn’t make them look good.”
She searched online for video tutorials, but while there were useful how-tos on making cakes, there was little on how to decorate them. So Mazumder experimented, investing in equipment to manipulate icing and model fondant. In this way she developed her skill. It was then that the money-making potential first came to light. “I thought, you know what, I’m going to set up my own classes and I’m going to teach other people how easy it is to decorate cakes,” she says.
She hired her local village hall in Amersham and waited for the students to flock in and although she was anxious before the first class, she soon found herself having fun. It nevertheless proved tough to bring in a steady stream of students. “I spent almost £300 for a tiny quarter page advert in an A5 local magazine and thought that because it was local loads of local people would come, but it didn’t work out like that. It was just a really expensive marketing activity.”
Looking for a more cost-effective option, Mazumder set up a Facebook page called Cake Masters. To get things going she asked all her friends and family to like the page. But the community quickly took off when she started to post her and her students’ creations. Mazumder became her community’s go-to expert for cake-related queries: everything from why their cupcakes were sinking in the middle to why chocolate chips were never evenly spread throughout the batter after baking.
“It suddenly became this community online where bakers would share their creations,” says Mazumder. “I’d write posts and suddenly get 80 comments in no time at all. It was just incredible, the power of Facebook and it soon turned into an amazing Facebook page with people across the globe stopping by to share their cake creations.”
This vibrant community gave Mazumder an idea. She began pulling together photos of impressive bakes and topics that were discussed among the page’s members. “I used Microsoft Publisher to create a basic newsletter, which was, really the first issue of the magazine.”
The digital publication grew, helped by Mazumder promoting it on the Facebook page and mining her community for personal stories, cake pictures and feature ideas. She began charging for access.
With it proven that readers would pay to read, Mazumder looked into printing a digital copy. “I told my husband that we needed to decided what to do about printing, and he just said ‘let’s do it!’.” They discovered the minimum print run was 1,000 and only sold around 100 of their first printed edition. “We were collecting skyscrapers of different issues in our home.” says Mazumder.
In 2014, Mazumder and her husband Yawar Mehboob, quit their jobs in the city to make a real go of the magazine. Now it can be bought in all major UK supermarkets and newsagents, and in shops in the USA, Australia and South Africa. It is also sold directly to 60 countries. To grow internationally, Facebook has been vital for Cake Masters.
Mazumder takes time each month to showcase the magazine, presenting the pages and talking through its highlights on Facebook Live. She also targets Facebook posts to grow her Facebook community.
As the magazine sales have grown and the brand’s Facebook community has boomed - reaching over 970,000 at last count - Cake Masters has been able to diversify. In 2014, Mazumder and Mehboob put together the first Cake Masters Magazine Awards at the Birmingham NEC, the first cake decorating and sugarcraft awards in the industry, with categories including best wedding cake award and novelty cake award.
“Last year we had an hour long programme on TV, on The Craft Channel.” However, the Cake Masters Facebook community got an exclusive preview as Mazumder went on Facebook live before the ceremony got started. “It was a great way of capturing my nerves and excitement at the time, and it was a really great way of doing of communicating with my audience,” says Mazumder. The awards are an annual event and one of the most anticipated events in the industry.
With both Mazumder and Mehboob working full-time on the business, are they happy with how it’s growing? “We are really enjoying our success and it’s so different to working in the city. This is a good kind of busy,” says Mazumder. “We’re excited about growing our brand this year and looking forward to launching a French language version of the magazine in Paris and an Indian version in Mumbai later this year.”
Content on this page is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with Facebook sponsor of the Guardian Small Business Network Connected for Success hub.
