AMy county seems to be overrun by cheap cake ladies!! I am self taught and am still expanding my client list and skill set, but I work hard and I value my time spent away from my husband and one year old son. I usually overlook the cheap cake ladies and say if someone wants to settle for less quality or if a baker wants to basically give their cake away like a cheap cake hooker then that is up to them. However, today's incident "took the cake" (pun intended). This girl on Facebook asked if anyone knew of a good cake baker. A lot of my customers tagged me in the post, so I commented and included my information, as did some of the other local bakers who were tagged. Then this girl commented under all of our info that the poster should find out all our prices and she would do it cheaper than we could. It was the last straw.. Maybe I shouldn't have but I commented back.:[IMG ALT=""]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3206169/width/350/height/700[/IMG]

After this she commented back and said she is new and trying to get her name out there and that it was no different than Walmart price matching...really?? I told her if she really felt the need to do that then she should pm, but that if she prices like Walmart, when she wants to them raise her prices, her customers will have come to expect walmart prices and she will be losing money. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut, but I am fuming!!!

AMy county seems to be overrun by cheap cake ladies!! I am self taught and am still expanding my client list and skill set, but I work hard and I value my time spent away from my husband and one year old son. I usually overlook the cheap cake ladies and say if someone wants to settle for less quality or if a baker wants to basically give their cake away like a cheap cake hooker then that is up to them. However, today's incident "took the cake" (pun intended). This girl on Facebook asked if anyone knew of a good cake baker. A lot of my customers tagged me in the post, so I commented and included my information, as did some of the other local bakers who were tagged. Then this girl commented under all of our info that the poster should find out all our prices and she would do it cheaper than we could. It was the last straw.. Maybe I shouldn't have but I commented back.:[IMG ALT=""]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3206172/width/350/height/700[/IMG]

After this she commented back and said she is new and trying to get her name out there and that it was no different than Walmart price matching...really?? I told her if she really felt the need to do that then she should pm, but that if she prices like Walmart, when she wants to them raise her prices, her customers will have come to expect walmart prices and she will be losing money. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut, but I am fuming!!!

AI edited to cut out her name, because even if she is a cheap cake lady, she shouldn't be openly bashed. I don't hate her or want to be a cyber bully...just need to vent lol! How do y'all deal with cheap cake ladies and undercutting? 3 times this week it has happened. Today it was just too much.

AIt's awful isn't it? That decorators have the mentality of being cheap, that fair compensation for their own hard work isn't even considered? I can't relate to it, I just can't. I never went into this with any intention other than being profitable and enjoying myself.

AI have been so close to telling cake ladies off before now, I understand why you did it!

I was tagged in a thread where someone had quoted £30 for a 2 tier cake with black lace and 2 hand painted silhouette characters on it, I couldn't check out the work of tbe person who quoted (super common in my area cos there are loads of "illegals" as I have come to call them, floating around.

I made a point to the OP about cheap vs quality, but I'm not sure that was a great idea either....

A

I know... I did start put priced a little less than I should have, but I have always tried to remind myself that my time is worth something, even in the beginning. If I don't make any money or even worse,lose money, it is not worth the ttime spent away from my family. I love what I do, but I agree that I do this to be profitable while doing something I love.

AIt's just going to keep happening unfortunately. As long as there are customers that only care about getting the cheapest cake possible, with no regard for actual quality, and decorators who don't give a rat's butt about it either, it will continue. Until they get burned out and start selling healing oils or have jewelry parties. And another will step in to take their place.

A

I don't blame you...I would have too :)

Lol so true

you know, in some industries, the lowest quote is thrown away. It is assumed that the lowest priced vendor probably can't complete the job properly, without raising prices at the end or doing shoddy work. The idea is to encourage vendors to price the job correctly for the work to be done. 

 

 

hmmmm

AWOW!! I always assumed ppl undercharged out of ignorance...Not as a marketing strategy. How awful

A

Very good point! I like your line of thinking :)

A

Amen! And you are right about beyond not nice...I am generally a passive person who just lets stuff roll off my back, but this was just too much! What is really funny is some of my fellow local cake bakers, my competition, agreed and liked my comments :D

And I forgot to add, I realize you could have used more scathing words than "not nice", but were trying to be as civil as possible

I only make cakes for friends and family & I charge just for ingredients & utitilities and don't actually make a profit however to quote £30 for a two tier cake with lace is just obscene and outright using undercutting as a marketing strategy is just so so wrong. So many people do this and adopt attitudes that cake should be cheap because it's 'just cake' that it's making my decision on whether or not to make my hobby a business very very difficult indeed! It must be so infuriating for those of you whose livelyhood it is potentially damaging.

And I can't help but immediately think 'cake wrecks'

She's also making a mistake bc as the OP said it's better to make friends with your competition than have them as and "enemy". 

A

Lol yep...my daddy always said "You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar." I was trying to be as nice as I could while still being firm and getting my point across. :D There was a lot more I kind of wanted to add in but I knew I probably should keep the rest of my thoughts to myself or posted here...the "cake hooker" comment I posted here seriously almost got posted to her on fb haha :) But that would have done nothing but tick people off, ruin my reputation and lower me to her level...but I did consider it for a while before deciding it wasnt wise. haha :D

:D

I definitely believe this whole heartedly. You just never know when a baking acquaintance may need you or you need them. Plus, to me it is a respect thing. Yes they are my competition, but I shouldn't try to do them dirty. That's just not right.

There is a bakery here (home bakery) that tells her customers to get quotes from me and she will beat the price. She has openly bashed me, filed false police reports on me, followed me around stores to see what I buy... She is so ridiculous. I ignore the heck out of her, but it just seems to feed the fire. My prices are higher than "Walmart  pricing" but a little lower than some high end bakeries here due to only being open a year. I increase gradually as I master more things, but if you go to me and "Experienced Bakery X" our prices are only different by 10-20 dollars. Cakes in Oklahoma are cheap, anyway, compared to where some of you are from.

A

Oh wow!! That person sounds straight up crazy!

Here comes the lecture, so watch out...The new reality in the world of cakes is that this kind of thing happens all the time because the market is totally saturated and it isn't going to change. I've been in business as a home-based baker for about 15 years, and when I started there were no cottage food laws, tv shows making it look like so much fun, or tutorials for how to do everything available online. I agree that it's frustrating to be undercut so openly, but yeah, it's a marketing strategy for some people whether we like it or not.

 

The fact is that people in general DO NOT CARE about getting the best-quality cake, they just want a cake that's "nice" and within their budget. The cakes that you and I look at and think "oh my, that one looks like it went through the carwash" look really good to people who can't do any cake decorating at all. It's a sad situation, but it's par for the course these days. I just watched a cake class online that was showing how to make a butt-ugly cake and it was being presented as a masterpiece, so standards for most people are very low.

 

If you want to be able to charge more for your cakes, you need to target the customers who DO care. The way to do that is going to be different for everyone, but those people do exist, and it's your job as the marketing department of your business to find them. posting messages like that on facebook is generally not going to win you any points with customers, they'll just see it as sour grapes even though we all understand the feeling behind it.

 

If you run into this undercutter posting like this again, I'd suggest that you post something along the lines of  "If you're interested in talking to me about your cake, please call me or send me a message.  I don't match the cheapest prices in town, like Walmart does, but my cakes are far superior to Walmart's! I'll provide an excellent quality cake at a reasonable price."

A

Great advice! Thank you! I probably will use this exact wording next time I am confronted with the issue or something very similar. It is excellent wording!

A

Haha :D

AAnd to add to Costumeczar's bucket of sunshine and kittens (complimentary by the way, that's keeping it real!), if your town already has so many people fighting over work, why join in? Unless you can offer something that's obviously a notch above everyone else's work, or you specialize in something specific (and really shine at it), why bother?