For the past 20 years, BakeSmart has been the bakery industry’s premier solution for managing custom cake orders.
While features and workflows were updated over time, the product, the technology, and the brand mostly stayed the same. But as on-premise solutions become harder to develop and support, and as bakeries become more technically advanced, BakeSmart needed to transition to the cloud.
Over several months, we helped BakeSmart align its product hierarchy, redesign the product UI, and update its positioning and messaging to reflect 20 years of growth. And of course, why not put the icing on the cake with a new brand and website?
A lot can happen in 20 years. When BakeSmart came to us, their business strategy was growing and shifting, and they needed help understanding how this new strategy would change their marketing and sales approach.
You make think all bakeries are alike, but like any market, there are nuances that, if discovered, can greatly impact your ability to target the right customer at the right time. We helped the founding team make sense of the market, then created new positioning and messaging that better reflected the company's new direction. With this new organization, the team was aligned around a new foundation that allowed for consistency and efficiency across the company.
A new GTM strategy doesn't always imply that a company needs to rebrand itself. BakeSmart is a known by longstanding customers, but the brand was simply outdated and lacked the energy and vibrancy of the new strategy.
BakeSmart knows their customers and prospects well. Half the team worked in bakeries and knew that bakery owners want to buy technology that truly meets their specific needs (hence why BakeSmart was created in the first place). Our approach included actual illustrations of bakery items and bakery lingo that would resonate immediately and say "we know a thing or two because we've been in your shoes."
One very important part of BakeSmart's transformation was the product itself. Before coming to Five Four, BakeSmart was an on premise solution requiring manual software updates to be done in the bakeries themselves. We don't need to describe how stifling that was to innovation and a growing product roadmap.
BakeSmart made the big decision to move to the cloud. We took the opportunity to redesign the existing product and include a few new features they were ready to build. The result? A product that bakers love to use and find critical to fulfilling orders.
Let's just say we had a lot of fun activating this illustrative brand. Bakeries make people smile. You buy a cake to celebrate momentous occasions, and you grab a donut on your way to work to make your commute feel more delightful. From wall calendars that hang inside the baker's kitchen to conference booth activations that bring in new prospects, we proudly helped the team take the new product and brand to market cohesively.
