Elizabeth Solaru is the founder of multi award winning Elizabeth’s Cake Emporium, one of the best wedding cake companies in the world. Her company creates innovative, opulent and beautifully handcrafted cakes using the most carefully sourced ingredients.
A pioneer in the wedding industry, her creations have been featured in numerous national and international blogs and publications and have graced the best homes and palaces in the world. Clients include British, European and Middle Eastern Royalty, A list celebrities and ultra high net worth individuals.
Elizabeth has appeared on BBC1, the Good Food Channel, Channel 4, BBC Radio and Sky Living as a luxury expert. A regular on Sky TV, she is the only three times winner of The Great Cake Bake, a show which featured the best wedding cake makers in the country.
A renowned and engaging international speaker and wedding industry judge, she travels the globe speaking to fellow cake makers, women in business, wedding industry professionals and other entrepreneurial groups.
She has spoken in over 10 countries at companies such as JP Morgan, Ernst and Young, Guarantee Trust Bank, WEDx Italia and her work has also taken her to Number 10 Downing Street. She presents on a number of topics ranging from her own inspirational creative journey from Microbiologist and Headhunter to luxury cake maker to the most affluent.
In this exclusive interview, Elizabeth spoke to Today Africa about her entrepreneurial journey. Watch the interview here.
Tell us a bit about yourself. Who is Elizabeth Solaru?
Let me go back a tiny bit. I was born in London, brought up to about the age of 10 in London. And then I was taken back to Nigeria by my parents. I was educated in Nigeria. I went to University of Lagos and did my degree in microbiology. And then I went to college of medicine, Idi-Araba and I did my master’s in medical microbiology.
So after my studies, I came back to the UK and I started working as a biomedical scientist in a hospital, St Mary’s hospital. In those days you got a job as a trainee, you got trained. And then after completing my training, I went over to Great Ormond Street Hospital to work as a scientist.
I was at Great Ormond Street Hospital for about seven years. And I remember thinking there’s going to be more to life than being in a lab all the time, and I wanted to go into business and I did what we do here. And I just went off and did another degree. I did an MBA but it was while I was doing the MBA that I realized that the degree will not get me to where I wanted to go. So I had to learn how to network. That was when I believed my career really started because it was easy to get a job in the lab.
Not easy because to be honest with you, the way I got a job in the lab was literally by walking into a hospital and I asked to speak to the head of the department of microbiology. He came out and I said, look, I just want a job. I don’t care what I do. I will clean. And he said, wait there. And he went inside and he photocopied all the trainee jobs for me.
So that was the first bit of favour that I got because those jobs I would have never known about them. Because they were in a specialist magazine. So after that I thought I needed to leave the lab. I then decided to do an MBA and I use the same method. I literally asked my business school if I could have a job after doing the MBA. Many people have turned me down for a few jobs in the city, but I know that I needed a job to bridge the gap.
I asked my business school and they said, look, we don’t have a lot of money, but we can give you a title and we can give you an email. So I took the job? I would say that again was another bit of favour because I was able to use my position as head of MBA careers at the business school. I leveraged that to get into a lot of spaces.
And I was just networking and it was in the course of networking that I met a guy and he said to me, I’m starting my own company. Would you like to join me as a headhunter? So that’s how I got my headhunting job. And once I got the headhunting job. I became very good at it and I did what I had to do, I wrote articles for the company website. Also, I did a lot of job hunting because in those days the guy did a lot of job hunting workshops.
So I learned from him, many people don’t like public speaking and I don’t like public speaking either. But I thought to myself I have no money, I have no connections and I’m black, so I need to do something that’ll make me stand out. While he was delivering job hunting workshops, I was learning from him how we deliver and what he says and stuff like that. And that was how we had to deliver those workshops.
And I started my third career as a cake maker. After several calls, I called a particular office, the office of Elizabeth Shakerley, Queen Elizabeth’s cousin and the girl said, you make cupcakes. I said, yes, I make cupcakes. I brought samples and they liked the samples and that’s how I started working with them. She was my biggest client while the other clients were not so nice, she was so nice. After I delivered it to her, she then wrote me a testimonial and she said that I can use it in marketing.
Of course I took the testimonial and plastered it everywhere and used it everywhere. And that was how I got started working with the really rich, the famous, royalties, celebrities. It was a long process, but I got there in the end. So that was how Elizabeth’s Cake Emporium came to be. But alongside that when you’re working for high class people. You are only considered as your last job. So you can’t take anything for granted. I did a lot of things, I tried to make sure that the marketing, the images of my cake, I just had to make sure they were good.
Also I didn’t want to be the face of the company because, and that was doubt in me. Because sometimes as a black person in the UK, you are worried if they see a black face, will they buy from me? But after several years of making the cake, people got to know me anyway. So it didn’t really matter. And also when you’re dealing with a certain level of clients, if they like you, they like you. If they don’t like you, they don’t like you. And they have nothing to do with whether you’re black or white or whatever.
Like I said, there was a lot of learning along the way. Then when COVID happened, I was asked to speak on so many forums and I started talking about luxury business. I started talking about things that people need to be aware of, the different types of luxury clients.
And I was really surprised that many people didn’t know what I knew. So because I was talking about it so much, I decided why not investigate a bit further and that was how the idea for the book came to be.
What were the challenges that you faced and how did you overcome them?
The challenges were many. I failed some I overcame.The first challenge for me was finding high end clients. After calling everybody and the door is slammed in your face, what do you do? So I started doing wedding shows. I remember I would register for a wedding show.
Because there were different levels of wedding shows and some will say you’re not known. And if you’re not a known name they will not have you on board. It took a long time to be able to persuade those high end shows. Because at the end of the day, they are protecting their brand. They want to make sure that the cake you’re bringing will be up to scratch. So luckily for me, I was able to do one particular show and I was put in a corner with another lady. She was also black. They put us in a corner.
And this is where fate, honestly I’m telling you, God has a way of elevating people. So they put me and her in a corner. Now this show had invited a TV camera to come and film. But not us. They didn’t come to film us. So the TV crew, they came to film somebody else. And the person they filmed has done and looked immaculate.
But the producer wasn’t happy. So the producer started looking around for other stands to film. And then he decided to film my neighbour, my friend. And in the process of filming my friend, he noticed my cake. But after he filmed my friend, he left. So because they had left, I just went to watch a bridal fashion show. And then I heard this lady scream my name, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, they come for you, they come for you.
So I ran back to my stand and the guy said, I just love your cake. I have to go back and film then. And he filmed the cakes and he said, by the way, can you tell me a bit about cake trends? So he interviewed me as a bonus. And that was my first ever being on a TV show. And I remember when the show was being played on Sky TV, I would get so many texts, so many calls saying that you’re on TV. The story didn’t end there.
What also happened was that this same guy had an idea for a cake show and he said, Elizabeth, I have an idea for a cake show. So I wrote him a list of all my cake heroes, all the people I felt were top cake makers in the UK, and I sent him the list. He said, Elizabeth, I want you to be a part of the show. And I said, I’m not an expert, that I didn’t want to do this. I remember talking to my sister about it and my sister said don’t go and disgrace yourself, and are you sure you are up to scratch, I’m like, I will see.
He insisted, he said he wanted a mixed ability group and he wanted me to be a part of the show. On the morning of the show, driving with a driver. And the driver was even if you only win one out of the three, that will be something, and we prayed that I will win one.
When the driver came back, he said that from the gate, people were telling him, I won three out of three. I won all the challenges. So that became my claim to fame because I was an unknown. It was literally unknown, nobody knew me. And all of a sudden I was this cake maker that beat everybody else on this TV show.
That brought another challenge in itself because I had this so-called fame but I didn’t have the clients that I needed to get. So I had to focus on getting the clients.
I remember talking with the driver, because in the UK then we had mini cabs and this guy was the mini cab driver that I use all the time. And we were chatting and I was like I need to find clients. And he said, my office, they do something called leafleting. So leafleting means that they put leaflets in the letter boxes of houses.
I asked him, do you leaflet expensive areas, really posh areas? And he said, yes. I said, excellent. That became my market strategy. So I said to him, how much would you charge? He said bring 10 pounds. And 10 pounds was affordable then. So I’d give him 10 pounds and he would take the leaflets. I said, only areas with really nice postcodes.
And I will know when he leaflets because that afternoon I will get at least three inquiries and from those three inquiries, I think two people will order a cake. They’ll just say, we saw your leaflets and we love your cake. Can you make a birthday cake? And that was how I started building up my client list.
Also I remember in the events industry, a lot of people were doing style shoots, especially wedding planners. So they’ll do a shoot to try to do a mock-up wedding, a fake wedding. Some of us will be begging for the opportunity to do that. Eventually one or two people accepted to work with me and then I started working my way up. Then one day I remember thinking I can do a shoot that I want because sometimes you do these shoots, you don’t even get images back or they don’t credit you or they don’t mention you. Those were massive challenges.
And then I decided to start doing my own. I remember I went to another friend of mine and I said, you know what, as African people, why don’t we do an African inspired wedding shoot. This was many years ago, way before Afrobeat became a thing. We did the shoots. I don’t know how we did it, but we did the shoot. She brought so many props. We found a photographer, we did the shoot and we got the images back. And the problem was who was going to blog about the images because bloggers were powerful. These women ruled the events industry.
So it was like, how can we persuade a blogger? Only one blogger agreed to blog it. And this blogger charged, but at least she agreed to blog it. I got my first breakthrough via this blogger. And then, a blogger in America, a very big blogger. We sent her the images and she arranged them beautifully, this is why curation is so important. The way she organized bitches, she created a theme around the images. And we were like, wow, is this our work?
This big American blogger, black blogger, blogged about it. And it was a massive hit. And then another white blogger and I’d already approached her by the way she said no. She then came back and she said, apologies Elizabeth, I know I said no, but I saw those images can I have them? I was just so happy I said yes of course. So she blogged about them. Then another person said, because this white girl had blocked them, she was also a white lady. She also followed, it was a condominio effect.
And this is why I say to people when you’re starting out, even if it’s not perfect, even if there are ups and downs, just persevere because you never know. So that was how, from that one shoot. We started organizing more shots, started doing things for ourselves, if that makes sense. One thing I learned is that as you’re building your professional brand or your business brand, you can also build your personal brand and alongside it. At one point they will converge, but at some point they will diverge again.
So for me being able to build that personal brand and being in a whole new life to the point where some photographers would come to me and say, are you doing any other shoots? I want to work with you. All because of the initiative and I remember when we did our first shoot, a lot of people made fun of us. What had happened was that Auntie Betty Irabor, she also put the shoot in her magazine or something because people reached out to really help because nobody had done an African inspired shoot before.
So Bellanaija blogged about it and the comment section was on fire because people were making fun and they said what they needed to do. But I’m like, you know what, I don’t care. The most important thing is that we’ve done it and it’s inspiring. And we learned from our mistakes as well. That was how I started overcoming some of the challenges of not getting enough clients.
You work with high profile clients around the world. What has been your strategy in managing expectations and delivering luxury experiences to these clients?
You have to tailor what you deliver to the clients. There is something about client psychology that I love because I used to interview high profile chief executives. I kind of had to study them and understand them because when you’re interviewing a high profile chief executive, they’re very clever. They got to where they got to by being good with words, by being good with people. Sometimes they can play you if you are not careful. You shouldn’t be carried away so at the end of the day, clients are like that as well.
Some clients are straightforward, straight to business, some clients I never ever meet. I’m there to just deliver what I need to deliver. But what I try to do is that I try to gather as much information as possible. So for some of them, I speak extensively with the staff, with the gatekeepers, because the gatekeepers are very powerful, extremely powerful. So you speak with the PA. It could even be the gate man. It could be the security guard, it could be their bodyguard, or it could be the family officer.
You need to speak with as many people as possible and know their likes and dislikes. Know what they like to see. If an event planner has engaged you, you need to listen very carefully to the planner, to what they’re telling you, what they’re not telling you. And you need to help the planner as well, because not all planners are good planners. Some planets are fantastic on the creative side, but on the admin side they are really bad.
So you have to be the one running around and doing certain things for them. And even giving them a checklist and helping them, but you have to do it in such a way that they think they’re the one running the show. But there’s a lot of good behind delivering those experiences. There are times where you have to think for the clients and you have to curate for them.
Because many people make the mistake of thinking the more things you show a client, the better. No, I curate. I have over 50 different cake flavours that I alter, but there are times I only show a client maybe four or five or maybe even three. Because by the time I speak with everybody around there, I know they hate this, they hate that.
They love this, they love that. And some clients love surprises. I would say, by the way, I’ve created your favourite childhood flavour, which is bubblegum. I created it as a cake. And they’re like, wow. So some people like surprises. Some don’t like surprises. That is how you deliver these luxury experiences. I talked a bit about it in my book, the LUXPreneur, because again, I don’t believe in gate keeping information.
But I talk about some of the things you need to have in place before you even start thinking about serving the high net worth clients, because people think that it’s just a matter of looking for people that have money, but you need to look at it from your perspective. Imagine that the only thing that people want from you is your money. The only reason why people are smiling at you, and why they like you is your money. Imagine how that will make you feel.
So you need to think of things from that perspective as well. And you need to make sure that your part in their life is that you’re making their life as easy as possible and you do your job and you leave. If they want to be friends with you, fine. But before you deliver your job, don’t be friends with them. That’s my advice. You can be friendly but they are not your friends until you deliver that job and they are happy, then you can be friends.
Speaking about your book, ‘The LUXPreneur: How to start and build a successful luxury brand’. Let’s assume that I’m entering the luxury industry as a newbie. What are the things should I look out for while trying to build my brand?
That is a phenomenal question. It’s really fantastic. I’ll tell you why, because it goes to the very heart of the reason I wrote my book because many people that serve luxury clients did not grow up in luxury, right? And yet they are producing products that serve luxury clients. Netflix as a brand, that’s a TV show brand. Is it luxury? Semi luxury maybe. But it’s not really luxury but the people that created Netflix. And this is a true story.
They took it to blockbusters and blockbusters said it will never work. Because they don’t know the industry, right? When you look at the big brands that people know? Brands like Gucci, like Chanel, that are big brands now. They started like you and I. The people that started the brands were not from luxury. Pocoshanel was an orphan and she grew up in an orphanage. Guccio Gucci was a porter at the Savoy in London. Louis Vuitton that many people talk about. He walked barefoot to Paris. He was that poor.
My point is that one of these luxury brands that we know today, they started from people like you and I. But the big name brands, the way they operate luxury, once you become big, the way you operate luxury is completely different. So I wrote the book from a founder’s perspective. If you were to start today with no money, with 40 pounds and a secondhand mixer, which I started with.
But going through all the books, a lot of them were written by professors of luxury or people who had run big luxury brands. Not many had written a practical book. So my book is in three parts and every part you can read as standalone. So you don’t have to read every other thing before you read that, where whatever part you want to read.
The first part is all about you as a person and your mindset. So for example, when I did my own characterization, my own archetype, I came out as a combination of two things, an artisan and a visionary. As an artisan, all I want to do is create my cakes, which is bad for business because I’m not thinking about pricing. I’m not thinking about the cost of ingredients. And I need somebody to say, Elizabeth enough. Don’t spend much anymore money on ingredients. This is our margin. I need somebody like that.
I had to look at my own strengths and weaknesses. Part one does that. So before you even enter into the luxury business, and this is who you are, this is what you need to watch out for. And this is what you need to do to mitigate. Then the second part, I talk about five things you need to be aware of if you want to set up a luxury brand. And I explained to you what the five things are. And I also break down how to go about it.
So one of them, for example, is storytelling. Can you tell a compelling story about your brand? I even give you the step-by-step of how to do it in the book. I also give you a step-by-step of getting the right images, because at the end of the day, when we look at adverts, we’re dreaming. What is it about certain images that you see the image and you go, oh my God, I wish I could buy that dress or buy that handbag. I then talk about what you need to do to make sure that those things are present in your brand.
And I even talk about the different types of luxury brands so that you know the difference between brand A and brand B. All the differences I break it down. I tell you so for people that don’t even know anything about the luxury world it’s in the book. Then the last part, which is the, the part that many people like is the clients. The different types of luxury clients, how you can find them, where they are and why they buy so that you can have those strategies in place so you can sell to them.
Because there’s no point in trying to sell something to somebody a certain way, if it’s not resonating. Because the whole point of luxury is that luxury resonates. There’s a reason you like certain brands. So how can you then make your own brand for a particular type of client? How can you make that brand resonate? Everything is in the book. Even if you’re not in the luxury space.
For me, a luxury brand starts with a client. Because different luxury brands attract different clients. And the one thing luxury brands have done very cleverly and in an amazing way, they know how to take clients at every level.
Click here to read the rest of the interview.
Contact Elizabeth Solaru:
- Elizabeth Solaru
- Luxury Business Emporium website
- Elizabeth’s Cake Emporium website
- Elizabeth Solaru on LinkedIn
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