Cake and Pictures, a directory of “simply the finest wedding photographers in the world”, is “suspending promotional efforts” as of the new year.
This is pretty much the death knell for the site, which aimed to match high-end photographers with high-budget (sorry, high-end) brides.
According to discussion on this thread (login required), the site was growing, but with to the loss of some key personnel, as well as the overall cost of developing the site, the decision was made to stop actively promoting the site.
Bill Cramer, CEO of Cake and Pictures, confirms this in an email exchange earlier today. “Shea [Roggio] was going to supervise our core C&P staff and run the site day-to-day, I was going to provide the overall infrastructure and other staff support, and we brought on Cliff Mautner (whom I had know from our early days as newspaper photographers) in an advisory capacity. Shea is a great photographer and a terrific human being, but when he got married earlier this year, he decided that he wouldn’t be able to continue working on C&P given the long horizon time we saw for our profitability.”
Not all is lost. The site will remain online, at least for the foreseeable future, though it will not be updated or promoted. Brides will still be able to find photographers via the site.
Digital Wedding Forum Members who were part of the site are hopeful that the fact that the site isn’t been completely shuttered is a sign that it may be resurrected one day, but for now, that appears to be just wishful thinking, though, as Cramer says, “in a world where anything’s possible, it’s possible.”
Here is the complete text of his email to DWF.
Back HomeIn spite of ultimately shutting down Cake & Pictures (at least for now), I enjoyed collaborating with Cliff and Shea, our staff and our photographers. I learned a lot in the process, and I hope I was able to provide some meaningful promotion for our photographers. Even though Wonderful Machine is now fairly successful, we only got there after failing at a couple previous attempts. So I’m used to the financial risks (and the criticism) that go along with creating something new. I find the process exciting and challenging. And though I certainly want to make money, Cliff and Shea and I all genuinely believed that we could build a site that was different and that really worked for photographers.
I originally conceived of C&P about two years ago with my former business partner Shea Roggio. Shea was going to supervise our core C&P staff and run the site day-to-day, I was going to provide the overall infrastructure and other staff support, and we brought on Cliff Mautner (whom I had know from our early days as newspaper photographers) in an advisory capacity. Shea is a great photographer and a terrific human being, but when he got married earlier this year, he decided that he wouldn’t be able to continue working on C&P given the long horizon time we saw for our profitability.
I chose to forge ahead with our launch anyway, at the beginning of July. Since then, our staff has been very diligent and creative in promoting our photographers in many ways. But over that time, I came to the realization that I didn’t have the time or expertise to provide the leadership that our staff needed and our photographers deserved. As soon as that became clear to me, I pulled the plug. We ended with 101 paid members on the site, and we were adding a couple more each week. We spent $230k building and running C&P and had about $30k in revenue, resulting in a $200k loss. At the end, we were losing money at about $10k/month, and I projected that we would break even after about a year.
I have gotten a number of very nice emails from our photographers wishing us well. And one of our photographers has even offered to volunteer to help us continue on.
For the moment, I’m just going to take a step back from it and focus my efforts on running Wonderful Machine and doing my own commercial photography. It’s hard to say whether I’ll want to dive back into C&P, but in a world where anything’s possible, it’s possible.
1 Comment at "Cake and Pictures Ceases Promotional Efforts"
>> but when he got married earlier this year, he decided that he wouldn’t be able to continue working on C&P given the long horizon time we saw for our profitability.>>
What? The wife said, “hey, we’re married now. Wanna have kids. A house. Get a real job that pays”?
>> I came to the realization that I didn’t have the time or expertise to provide the leadership that our staff needed and our photographers deserved. As soon as that became clear to me, I pulled the plug. We ended with 101 paid members on the site, and we were adding a couple more each week. We spent $230k building and running C&P and had about $30k in revenue, resulting in a $200k loss >>
Another entrepreneur wannabee. Didn’t have the expertise needed? Then get someone on board who does.
So what happens to all the paying members? They’re not getting what they paid for. They’d better get refunds. If not, I hope they sue, because this kind of breach ought not to be rewarded.
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