Steph Giordano (pictured)
Founder and Creative Director, Baked by Steph
Scaling up, at pace, from a hobby on social media into a full-on bespoke baking eCommerce business, Steph Giordano wanted to give her customers the best buying experience and have a payments platform ready for whatever the future brings.
Business started completely as a happy accident, says Steph Giordano, founder and creative director of Baked by Steph. “I’ve always absolutely loved baking and started an Instagram account back in 2018. It really was just for my mum and friends to keep track of my hobby.”
From hobby to baking eCommerce
“Before I knew it, I had a few thousand followers in just a couple of weeks. Then, I got a really big inquiry from a corporate client, and that’s the point at which I knew this could be a full-time career.” That leap of faith was in 2019.
Demand grew exponentially during the pandemic. Today, Belfast-born Steph has a team of 16, creating more than 1,000 personalised cookies, cakes and macarons every day. Selling online and over the phone, business is thriving; from the cheeky messages and loved ones spelt out in biscuit form — which saw many of Steph’s early creations go viral on Instagram — to one-off designs for weddings, birthdays, press launches and corporate events for well-known household brands.
Ingredients for eCommerce success
“Our relationship with Elavon came about when we decided to scale up and build ourselves a new website,” says Steph. They provide Baked by Steph with an eCommerce solution that brings all the business’ platforms together.
It fully integrates with the website to make secure payments easy for Steph’s team and their customers, whatever currency they’re paying in. Customers can also pay over the phone or through a link shared securely by email or text message.
Money goes into Baked by Steph’s account the very next day, helping with cash flow, while Elavon’s online reporting tools allow the business to keep track of every sale and transaction. “They were able to talk me through the entire process, show me forecasting and numbers… making it easy for me to make a decision which, as a business owner, is what I’m always looking for. I don’t have time to research everything in depth.”
We get next-day payments, which
really helps with our cash flow.
Making business easier
“Elavon kept us right, every step of the way. That was fantastic for me and my team in terms of learning how to use this new platform and making sure we understood everything,” adds Steph. “At the end of the day, when you’re talking about money, as a small business, it’s so important we get everything right,” she insists.
“Not only have we found the reporting process of our website sales much easier, but we’ve also found the reconciliation side of things for our bookkeeper much easier as well. We get next-day payments, which really helps with our cash flow.”
Sweet experience all around
“Building this whole eCommerce website and finding the right partner, it was important to find a solution that facilitated an easy checkout process. It ultimately makes our customers’ lives easier, so they can get the end product a lot faster,” says Steph. “It allows me much more time to focus on what I love, which is decorating the cookies and baking cakes.”
Watch Steph Giordano, founder and creative director, talk about why working with Elavon was a no-brainer.