Qredits is de handelsnaam van
Stichting Microkrediet Nederland

Adres hoofdkantoor (vestigingen »)
Wierdensestraat 27, Almelo

Postadres
Postbus 302, 7600 AH Almelo

Telefoon
0900-QREDITS(7733487) € 0,55 p/g

The taste of Nathalie's has Qredits!

Edible Art

Time for a professional kitchen - away from home. Nathalie purchased the kitchen interior with a microloan, thus her company was able to expand further - and her house went back to being her home!

Nathalie is a cake stylist. She designs cakes and bakes them. Not for a restaurant, not for a bakery, not for a shop. She bakes custom made cakes based only upon the story that the customer tells her. You can’t get more unique than that.
"The conversations with the people who want cakes are often very special," says Nathalie. "For example, two people who have gone through something sad, but still are going to get married. I incorporate colours, elements and symbols from their story into the cake."
Nathalie is one of the few in the Netherlands with this concept of custom made cakes. She is also virtually the only one specializing in "crooked" or "topsy-turvy" cakes: cakes as trembling towers. A 'crooked' cake consists of several cakes of different sizes, piled topsy-turvy on top of one another. They look amazing, artistic and personalized, and too good to sink your teeth into. "I love Alice in Wonderland – you can definitely see that," laughs Natalie. "There are just a few people who do something similar. They cut the cake a bit slanted, hollow a piece out, and push pieces together. I am the only one who works with supports to hold it all together.”  

Absolute top in the world

How did Nathalie come up with the idea of incorporating personal stories into slanted cakes and then to make it her profession? "I was born with baking tins in my hands." she begins. "I also knew that I wanted to do something where I used hands. I studied painting restoration, but it wasn’t creative enough for me. At some point I took a cake decorating workshop and realised: I want to explore this further. Two weeks later I was on a plane to America, first for an initial course of study and later for two specialized courses given by Colette Peters, the absolute best in the world of cake design and cake decoration. She taught me everything about crooked cakes - both with and without supports in them. "  

Three cakes at a time

Nathalie originally baked commercially home. The concept took off and the expansion was obvious, but there was no room for it. "My house became a half -bakery. I desperately needed a studio/kitchen." Nathalie wrote a business plan and went to a bank for financing. She wanted to borrow ten thousand euros. The bank wasn't willing to go beyond three thousand. Understandable, according to Nathalie. "This is a new type of bakery, and there was little concrete information. On top of that, we were in the middle of the credit crisis, and the banks were cautious. But three thousand was just not enough. But by word of mouth she heard that she could borrow ten thousand euros from Qredits. The process went very quickly; within a few weeks she had the amount in her bank account. Nathalie immediately rented a building near her home and bought a complete professional kitchen using the loan money. Three large wedding cakes (thirteen tins) can fit in the oven at once. Good cooling is just as important because the wedding cakes, Nathalie’s flagship product, are ordered mainly in the warmer months. Nathalie makes around thirty cakes per month from May to September, whereas during the other months the average is six. The studio is also used for workshops and children’s parties.

Tremendous harvest

Nathalie has found her way. "This is a very nice profession," she says. "It's hard work but so much fun." And it's going great to boot: the first year her company, Take The Cake, returned twice as much revenue as she herself had anticipated. It’s already almost too much for Nathalie all by herself, so she plans to outsource the administration and to hire an assistant in the summer months.

The microcredit was a very key success factor, according to Nathalie, "I simply had to grow because it just couldn’t continue at home anymore. That’s why a loan was absolutely essential. I'm going to pay it off quickly, so that it’s finished. And then… it'll be a tremendous harvest!

Desondanks kan Qredits geen absolute garanties geven voor de juistheid en de volledigheid ervan. De verstrekte informatie is bedoeld als beschrijving van de dienstverlening van Qredits, niet als aanbod, beleggingsadvies of financiële dienst. Qredits behoudt zich het recht voor de informatie op ieder moment en onaangekondigd aan te passen. Het foutloos en zonder onderbrekingen functioneren van deze website wordt niet gegarandeerd.

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Voor deze website geldt geen overnemingsvrijheid en zijn alle auteursrechten van toepassing, inclusief die uit artikel 15 van de Auteurswet. De verstrekte informatie is alleen bedoeld voor eigen gebruik. Het overdragen, verveelvoudigen, bewerken of verspreiden ervan is niet toegestaan. Als bezoeker van deze site bent u verplicht eventuele aanwijzingen van Qredits over het gebruik van de informatie op te volgen. Het Nederlands recht is van toepassing.