Product details

Flour Shop, a New York-based custom cake company, was founded in 2012 by 32 years old Amirah Kassem (Kassem), a Fashion Institute graduate. Kassem while working at Denim Company BLK DNM, had baked cakes as a hobby for friends and colleagues at work. Encouraged by sale of her creations, she made a risky career switch from fashion industry to baking from home. Ross Harrow (Harrow) a neighbour who had assembled cake boxes for her, after graduating from NYU joined Flour Shop as Co-founder and CEO. Kassem and Harrow got married and opened their retail store in New York's SoHo neighbourhood in 2017. Flour Shop specialised in over-the-top confections, using unconventional flavours. Their signature cake was 'The Explosion Cake'. Flour Shop did not approach any VC for funding, nor did they spend on marketing. The Flour Shop had leveraged Instagram extensively to connect and interact with customers. Their Instagram account had around 300,000 followers. They were acclaimed as 'highly sought-after brand, renowned for creating treats that routinely provided unexpected whimsy and sparkly joy'. As per market analysts, using Instagram to grow a business was an affordable way and it had high engagement rates, but it came with a bunch of challenges. The retail bakery business had its own host of risks and challenges. Flour Shop had started well in New York, can they be scaled up? Can they expand to sell both perishable and non-perishable items and become a lifestyle store?