We were lucky to catch up with Erin Lowe recently and have shared our conversation below.

Erin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

To be successful, I believe that you have to have the drive and deep desire to want to prevail! Overcoming the many obstacles that owning a business comes with has been the hardest step but you need to get through the tough times day by day to get to where you need to be. It takes the experience of going through it to really understand. Never be afraid to ask for help either, there is nothing wrong with getting a helping hand through the process!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi, I’m Erin! Owner and baker of Erin’s Creations LLC. I began my journey back in high school when I took an interest in cake decorating by watching Duff Goldman on Ace of Cakes and Buddy Valastro on Cake Boss. I was obsessed and fascinated by their skill and I knew it was something I wanted to get into someday. I created my first cake at the age of 16 for my sisters birthday and it was an absolute disaster but at the same time I was very proud of what I had created!

Fast forward to college, I enrolled in the culinary arts program at southwestern illinois community college. This was a wonderful program and I got to meet and work with some amazing chefs during my time there. I learned the basics of being in the kitchen and received my culinary arts degree. My main goal was to specialize in cakes and I had taken one cake decorating class during those years.

The majority of what I do now with cakes and baking is all self taught. My best tool was YouTube and watching endless videos on Instagram for inspiration and how to’s! A lot of my experience also came from taking on a variety of custom cake orders and challenging myself to do things I have never done and learning as I go. I love a good challenge with cakes and I amaze myself every time I try something new or follow a cake trend that turned out better than I anticipated.

After baking on the side for many years, I decided in 2020 to make this a full time gig and obtained my LLC and business license to make it official. It’s been amazing to see how far I’ve come and I’ve gained the best clientele and have many so many new relationships over the years that I am so grateful for.

Over the past few years, I have done dozens and dozens of weddings and it quickly became one of my favorite things about this business. Aside from just custom cake orders, I love being able to help make a bride and grooms big day come to life and make it just a little sweeter with a custom wedding cake and catered dessert bars!

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

The most effective strategy for growing clientele has really been the power of social media! It truly is a very powerful tool and I owe a lot of my success to not only word of mouth from friends, but also by posting on a set schedule at certain times of the day where online traffic is heavy. You really have to tailor your posting times to when traffic is typically heavy online and it helps because you get the most amount of views and shares by doing so. It really has been all about timing and it really helped grow my business! Facebook ads and boosting posts helped a ton as well when I first started out.

Another strategy for me was participating in the winter vine street market in ofallon. I got the opportunity to meet hundreds of new customers and out my name out there. I highly recommend participating in a market of some sort to get your name out there!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

This is a great question because my dad jokes all the time about how I need to be the mayor of Belleville because he’ll go places and people will randomly ask, “Are you Erin’s dad!?” My point of this is that I generally know a lot of people in the area and already had many relationships with the folks I see daily between the gym and previous jobs, so when I started my business officially I knew I had the support I needed. When I began posting on social media and creating my brand on there, I had tons of people who had my back and wanted to see me succeed.

To me, a big part of building your presence on social media starts at having those relationships outside of social media. If I could give another piece of advice too, presentation is a very big part of it all! Not only do you want your product to taste good, but the first interaction you have with potential clients is them seeing your work before they actually get to try any of it. Over the years I’ve invested in quality ring lights, back drops and even some really good photo editing apps to help make my photos appeal to my audience as best as possible.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Erinscreationsstl
• Facebook: Erinscreationsllc

Image Credits
Allison Menne (photographer of the photo of myself)