Many years ago, we made a bad business decision: a terrible investment in a scam PR agency which turned into an ugly dispute due to the amount of money involved and the poor results yielded. We ended up being forced to pay for work never done; a honey trap was set and we fell for it (like so many others, we later found out) due to our inexperience. The courts were nothing more than a weapon for the PR company. I found out perjury is just the normal in the Legal system and the police refuse to investigate it claiming prosecution is too difficult (and yet they've never tried and if they tried this time, it would have been so easy). 

It was, and still is, a huge amount to lose as a small business but this Friday we finally cleared the disgusting debt. The mental relief is epic. This is the stuff businesses don't necessarily talk about as it's not sexy. It was a rough, painful, but very valuable lesson learnt, and the burden lifting of never having to deal with it, or anyone like them again was elating. We were buzzing like a pair of really happy hippos. Like I said, it's not anything to celebrate in terms of shiny business goals, but during these times, having any reason to celebrate is good enough. Even month we paid, it was sore reminder of the con and the crime. 

This week also saw my creative mind getting juiced after a very long time. I finally got my hands on a vat of Kinder Bueno style filling - creamy, white chocolate and hazelnut goodness. The temptation to bathe in it is too much. It smells AMAZING.

I'll be playing a lot more with it, but for my first cake using it I decided to pair it with our customers' other fave - Nutella. And omg omg, WOWWIE!

Chocolate and vanilla sponge layers, lots of Kinder Bueno-Nutella Swiss meringue buttercream, sexy striped fault line style and decorated with Buenos, Kinder bars, rochers and happy hippos.

I brought it home to binge on in my red dress, washing it down with pink Sussex bubbles (no champagne in the budget...we paid off a crappy debt, didn't win the lottery! LOL).

 

I often get asked by other small business owners how we get press coverage and if we would advise spending on PR. Hell no, we would never invest in PR again and wouldn't recommend it either (if we were a massive business it maybe very different).  And about how we get coverage? I really don't know, as the best coverage is always organic. Perhaps we're lucky where we get found through word of mouth. Perhaps my mouthiness pays off in PR results (ahem, BBC, Fox, Vogue, Evening Standard, TimeOut cover...but who's keeping tabs ;)). Perhaps our cakes just sell themselves. I don't know what it is. What I do know is that fluffy PR is like yesterday's fish n chip paper, but great cake is here to stay.

Lots of love, 

Reshmi xoxo