Interview an entrepreneur or small business owners Assignment

Interview an entrepreneur or small business owners - Assignment Example It integrates a comparison of my theoretical learning about entrepreneurship and the practical application of the theory in the business world. The reports reflects upon how entrepreneurs face failure initially and then they become successful. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORY The entrepreneur I interviewed is a young cook, who has opened up her own business of made-to-order fancy cakes and pastries. At the age of 23 years, Maham Baber began her business inspired by a few fancy birthday cakes she observed. Being a food fanatic and her passion for cooking and baking, she decided to open up a small business of made-to-order fancy home sweets of all kinds. Before opening her new business she took a few essential basic baking courses of professional baking. Based in her home town of Lahore, Pakistan, her business has flourished immensely over the past two years of the company's existence. The name of her bakery is Fiesta: Designer Cakes n Pinatas. Currently she works solo in the preparation of or dered sweets. The product offering includes designer cakes, desserts and pinatas. Each of these categories are available in numerous flavours. Cakes are custom made mainly fondant cakes with designs according to the customers' requirements. Desserts include all kinds of sweets like cupcakes, brownies, eclairs, macaroons, fruit and carrot cakes, moose, caramel crunch and tiramisu. Recently Fiesta has introduced a new variant to the business named Oh Ohs, which are chocolate coated cream filled rolls. The company takes orders through a Facebook page. Since it’s a young organization, it does not have a proper website as yet. However, the company works professionally as the orders are taken a week earlier and delivered to customers on the deadline. Sometimes the orders are picked by customers themselves from the owner's residence. At the inception of the business, the entrepreneur had to face certain challenges. For the initial few months, her business was running at a loss since at the time the demand for such fancy products was minimal. The product used to prepare the cakes were expensive as at times imported products were used which are usually expensive. She practically created the demand for designer cakes and other such sweets which took her more than an year. Moreover, her only communication was through Facebook which meant initially she was unable to reach her potential customer base. Also, since she took only a few courses in the beginning before starting, she had some cake and sweet disasters in the beginning which increased her cost immensely. One other main challenge was to convince customers to try out her product. This required good marketing skills which she lacked and hence gaining loyal customers was an extremely difficult phase for the entrepreneur. ANALYSIS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL CHARACTERISTICS As an entrepreneur, there are numerous characteristics which she embodies in her work and these entrepreneurial characteristics are the key to her im mense success in just two years of the business operations. However, her working solo on the orders hinders her way of developing some of the most essential entrepreneurial characteristics. Like every successful entrepreneur, Fiesta's owner loves her work. Her passion for baking is what led her to