Mark Henrietta Ogochukwu’s journey as a cake-baker started in 2015 as she set her sights on creating cakes that would delight taste-buds as well as please the eyes. She quickly gained popularity as her clients’ demands rose from just tasting her luscious cakes to wanting bespoke cake-creations requiring enormous effort from Mark Henrietta’s side. Today, she successfully runs her business in Lagos, Nigeria serving custom-made cakes for birthdays, weddings, events and more. As the business scaled, it was essential to hire employees to keep up with the exceeding demands and to serve another business wing – cake making classes and workshops.
Mark Henrietta Ogochukwu is also a successful cake-blogger with a massive social media following that requires additional time and effort on her part. Her vision is to ensure that the business prospers and flourishes overtime, enabling her to convert moments into memories through her sweet treats.
Time is the soul of business – making the most of it with Canon
Objective
- Maximize task-efficiency and unleash creativity by effectively managing time, printing in-house to unshackle staff from time-consuming activities.
- To find an all-rounder solution to support the business’s growing needs from printing cake accessories to instruction manuals, invoices and more.
Approach
- Expanding efficiency, cultivating creativity - To find a valuable printing solution for the rapidly growing baking business with the ultimate objective of eliminating extra tasks thereby saving precious time.
Challenges
- Time lost in coordinating and managing outsourced printing – extra burden for staff members
- Big hurdle in meeting urgent client requirements that involve printing, thus resulting in loss of cake orders
- Hefty costs involved in high-volume printing such as cake baking instruction manuals for classes and workshops
Results
- Liberating time, democratizing access to printing and embodying the spirit of creativity for the staff and the business
- Freedom to print seamlessly from any device through Canon print app
- High volume and impeccable quality prints
- Creating micro-moments for maximizing sales capacity – ability to accept last-minute orders from clients
DOWNLOAD CAKE BAKER CASE STUDY
“The business of cake baking is tedious and time-consuming, my number one priority at all time is to save time. Anything that allows me to do so is gold for the business as we are working round the clock to ensure we surpass our client’s expectations. I love the Canon PIXMA G3410 printer as it allows me to save precious time whilst giving me the opportunity to be creative. It is a must-have for a rapidly growing business like this.”
Significant Challenges
The art of cake-baking requires enormous effort, time and patience as the process involves going through multiple steps, each step at a time. This in turn restricts the number of orders that can be accepted on any given day which makes it even harder to scale the business. While the customer demands rise exponentially, the demands also include tailored creations and personalization messages which are often cake accessories that need to be printed or created from scratch. For a business like Mark Henrietta’s, time is the number one resource to capitalize on in order to achieve optimum business growth and scalability. However, outsourcing printing requirements meant a sheer loss of business revenue as it would eat up valuable time from Mark Henrietta and her staff’s hands. Another challenge remained the last-minute requests coming from new and existing and loyal clients to create custom orders. In a scenario like this, the only option for Mark Henrietta’s business was to either loose face with the client or to work extra-hours day in and night to ensure the cake and its accessories were both created equally.
Outsourced printing also hand-cuffed Mark Henrietta and her staff from setting their creative spirits free as there was always a question of quality vs quantity as well as the high costs incurred by the business. Furthermore, as the business launched learning classes, workshops and cake-making events for the public, there was a higher need to print relevant collateral such as brochures, instruction manuals, cooking guides and more. Office related printing requirements such as invoices, salary slips, and agreements only meant added pressure on time and resource management.
Eventually, it became crucial for Mark Henrietta to invest in a one stop shop printing solution that could fulfill the diverse and mounting business requirements.
Canon Solution
Mark Henrietta decided to invest in the Canon PIXMA G3410 printer post her thorough market research that involved looking at all the best printers available in the market. The printer with best return on time-savings was the clear winner for Mark Henrietta, PIXMA G3410 not only allowed her to maximize the business’s efficiency but also provided lucrative benefits such as high-yield printing, impeccable quality and low costs.
With the help of Canon PIXMA G3410, Mark Henrietta was able to achieve three Cs for her business:
1. Cultivating Creativity
2. Cost efficiency
3. Cutting down time consuming processes
The Canon printer became the perfect solution for the business as it drastically freed-up the time taken for printing processes. The Canon printing app liberated the staff from being stuck to one location to print documents, it delivered the much-needed freedom and flexibility to print from anywhere, anytime. Creativity is a big part of the cake-making business and having a printer in-house unleased creativity so the staff could experiment with different cake decorating designs. It further enabled the business to expand its ‘education-based’ vertical as printing manuals and books became a simple and easy task. Accepting last-minute orders was another positive side-effect the business experienced through the purchase of the Canon printer. All in all, having the Canon printer in-house enable and empowered Mark Henrietta’s cake business to flourish and scale without limitations.
“As a cake baker, artist and blogger, my hands are always full. I knew that I had to find alternative ways to ensure that mine and my staff’s time was being spent on actually fulfilling business requirements (creating cakes) rather than running around sourcing prints from vendors. The Canon printer has literally placed the power in our palms, we could be sat in a car travelling to work and we can print seamlessly from the app, to have all necessary prints ready. A solution that can save your time can save you money, and I am delighted to have found this solution in the Canon PIXMA G3410 printer.”
“The Canon printing app is the most-hands on app for a business like mine, it has permitted me to save so many hours. What was earlier a time-consuming and lengthy process that would require days is now just a click from my hand.”
“Creativity and efficiency are the two most important factors when it comes to continuing business growth. The Canon app has indirectly contributed towards further fortifying the business’s position in the market. By saving time on printing activities I am now empowered to actually spend more time, energy and efforts on teaching this creative art of baking to those who are curious and want to learn.”
Side by Side:
Mark Henrietta aspires to take her successful learnings from the baking industry to other fields in the future while continuing her association with Canon. Having experienced the benefits of having a high-yield, optimum-quality, low-cost printer in-house, she is optimistic of an even stronger alliance with Canon in the near future.