The Founder Exotique Cakes, Ms. Efua Olumide, is a graduate of accounting from the University of Benin (UNIBEN), who fell in love with cake making. A business she started with N250.00 20 years ago in a small shop has grown beyond just cake making to training institute. In this interview, Efua explores issues bordering entrepreneurship in the country and how they are likely to survive the operating environment.

Background

I am a graduate of accounting from the University of Benin with a passion for cooking. Before my university education, I went for one year catering and hotel management course at the Nigerian Hotels Catering School, Club Road, Ikoyi, where I fell in love with cakes, after one of the last classes we had in cake decorating.

After my graduation, I decided to start baking knowing full well that I couldn't work for anybody about 20 years ago.

I started with N250 and I didn't have much support from my daddy unlike. My daddy is a chartered accountant who had his own accounting firm and he believed I should have joined the firm as an accountant, but I didn't, to him then, cake making was nothing, it was as if you are that woman on the street frying Bean cake (Akara) by the roadside.

I did not have much to invest in terms of buying half bag of flour but one thing I kept doing was that anytime they pay me, I use part of the money to buy second hand books, I kept reading and improving myself and that was how the cake business started.

The name Exotique

People keep asking me how I came up with the name, as at that time cake making was not too popular but I felt like cake making is indigenous in Nigeria, is foreign and when you hear the name exotique, it reminds me of a beautiful butterfly with different colours and with exotic looks, I said to myself, cakes are also exotic when you come up with beautiful design and they are foreign.

Challenges

The first challenge was not money but friends, if I say pay me N1, 200 they will tell me it is too much, another challenge was people around who did not believe or support the business, I did not allow that to discourage me, I kept on because it was my passion. I breathe and leave cakes every other day, doing design gives me joy, I kept on one day after the other doing the same thing but trying to improve myself better.

Health issues

Everything is about moderation, you don't seat and eat a whole cake, too much of everything is bad, cakes are deserts, you just take a slice and remove your eyes, but because it is sweet, we want to have the whole.

Cakes are not food you eat in moderation, I eat cake everyday because I must taste for quality and people expect me to be big but no. Unlike our forefathers, the problem we have is that this days people eat and they don't do exercise, we eat carbohydrate and go back to seat down.

Government support

So many entrepreneurs are handicapped by equipment to startup, if government can provide enough support for caterers it would help, because you must be equipped to have a good product. Example: we have bread villages in 99 local governments just for bread makers where they are being given N1, 000, 000 worth of equipment.

If you equip women, you will be able to help equip their family and if women have more access to government funding it would be easier.

Words for upcoming entrepreneurs

If you don't have option and you want to better yourself, then you can, I had an option, my mum and dad would have been feeding me while I seat down because they were capable but I wanted to be in charge, I want to be myself in my future, I didn't want my future to be determined by my circumstances of no money.

Your cake reach

Who haven't we done cakes for, we have done cakes for the President, Governors, Ministers, Commissioners and just to mention but a few just by persevering and improving on what we have.

New trends and innovations

Cake making in Nigeria have been evolving, engineers, electricians, sculptors, painters now work on cake and that is why you now find cakes that move, we have gotten to that level in cake making but desert making is lagging behind so I thought in myself that I want to apply that knowledge from the source.

I went to Cordon Bleu pastry school in the UK and I found out that a lot of our technique that we have in Nigeria is very wrong, we don't even have the basics. All the time I am on the internet, you have to keep yourself abreast of thing happening around, you must be innovative, if you don't acquire knowledge, then you cannot be relevant to your industry.

Giving back

The course I am determined to take now is the basics in cake making, raising the standards of techniques in cake making, allowing people to get that knowledge and applying it.