My name is Mrs. Elizabeth Odigie, Creative Director of Tenderbake Confectionery, a cake and pastry outfit in Lagos, Nigeria.
Tenderbake Confectionery started operation about 6yrs ago, hoping to meet the demand of clients in and around our vicinity, especially clients who delights in freshly baked cakes and pastries.
Funding our outfit was not easy. We dreamt starting big but due to our inability to secure loan from a reputable financial institution,
we decided to start small instead of postponing the take off of our cake shop. We started operations with savings and financial help
from family members. To God be the glory, even though it wasn’t the way we planned to start, we were able to meet the demands of our clients.
The constant increase of baking materials is one of the numerous challenges we face in the baking business. Thereby making it impossible to have a fix price for most of our products.
Also new innovations, recipes, and methods of baking and decorating are evolving everyday thereby making it necessary to constantly upgrade and improve oneself and believe me, most of these upgrades don’t come cheap!
Other challenges in the cake business are in the delivery of our product to customers. It is of utmost importance that cakes ordered get to the customers at the right time and in good shape, regardless of the bad road and constant traffic on our roads.
Well, our success story is the joy of meeting the request of our customers. The positive feedbacks we get from them means we are on the right track. Believe you me, if with the economic situation in the country and we are still around then that is a success story.
Starting and maintaining a business in Nigeria is not easy, but with passion, focus, and prayer I believe any entrepreneur will surely succeed, so my advice for anyone who want to venture into any business is first of all to have passion for that business, find a way to start no matter how small, be dedicated, focused and be prayerful and with God on their side that person will surely succeed.
