A HOME-MADE SUCCESS STORY

But most real-life businesses experience problems. Two years ago Ms Goss-Custard feared that Honeybuns was about to go bust when her biggest client, a coffee chain, got into trouble. "We were selling more cakes to them than to anyone else and we had no idea they were struggling. It looked like curtains for us."

The company had started life in 1998 as a cottage industry business. As a child Ms Goss-Custard loved baking - "my mother had a wonderful talent and I started baking aged six". But it wasn't until after she graduated and took a job at a patisserie in Oxford that she realised that it need not remain simply a hobby.

With £50 of savings she bought a bike and began delivering freshly make sandwiches and cakes to employees of local businesses. "No one knew who I was, I was just some strange lady who turned up on a bike with nice sandwiches", she recalls.

But her products proved popular and it was not long before the business was getting too big for her to handle. "I was cycling 100 miles every week to cover a six mile radius, making endless trips to Tesco to buy ingredients and worrying constantly about meeting all the orders. Yet I had little idea about business and even kept all my receipts in a shoebox."

It was then that she decided to stop making the sandwiches. Instead she concentrated on the cakes and went in search of some big corporate customers. With a basket full of samples (and a heavy dose of courage) she took the train from her home in Guildford to London to visit all the big food stores she could think of.

"I was amazed how nice the people were," she says. "The big stores are actually adventurous and not at all patronising, as you might imagine. They like to try new things."

Her tactics even extended to posting her cakes through the doors of the company directors. "I knew that my cakes would knock their socks off - they just had to try them."

When the food hall at Harvey Nichols, the London department store, agreed to test out a small sample, it seemed that she was on her way to success. But then her biggest client, the coffee shop, broke the bad news. "We were supplying Harvey Nichols with £80 worth of stock each week and the coffee shop with £8,000. It really looked like the end."

Radical action was required. Ms Goss-Custard knew that picking up a client of that size overnight would not be easy and getting a huge capital injection would be even harder. Savings had to be made but the quality of the cakes could not suffer.

The outcome was redundancies and a shifting of the entire operation from Guildford to the Dorset farm where she now lives. "I realised that it would be so much cheaper to operate there, the business rates would be lower and I could get a grant to help me back on to my feet again."

It was an incredibly difficult decision to make but she was determined to succeed. "I just could not bear to see it fail when I knew it could work."

With the help of her husband she converted an old cow shed into a cooking unit and recruited her brother as a logistics manager to organise the distribution of the cakes across the country. It was a gamble that paid off.

Today the business which employs eight people is making a profit of £70,000 on a turnover of £470,000 and she is grateful for the lessons that the troubled period taught her.

"I learned an enormous amount about the need to spread your business and not rely on one big client - and about the need to pick yourself up and push on when things are difficult," she says.

Setbacks she has suffered since - such as being unable to register "Honeybuns" as a website because it is already registered as a pornographic site - seem quite insignificant in comparison.

Although the business is doing well, Ms Goss-Custard has no desire for fame and fortune. "I just want the operation to remain slick and smooth like it is now - and to continue making the best home-made cakes around."

Survival Tips

"Relationships with your clients and customers are hugely important. Treat them as you would like to be treated."

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