Kathleen Meisinger from CakeVase® came to the Sales Rescue Team for ideas about generating new attention to her niche product, CakeVase®.  It is a fun discovery to see that one of her top online retailers is a good friend of mine: Walter Kraus at ChefTools where he has the item in stock. If Walter is selling it, then it has to be a pretty cool product.

UPDATE 11/17/2009:  Kathleen is our first public review in our new format of talking about the hip companies doing it right.  You can read our simple post here at Dun & Bradstreet, which includes a fun new recipe sharing site, too. 

The idea is quite striking and sure to be appealing to foodies everywhere who want to get noticed at an event or special occasion.  I will have to admit that I didn’t get it, at first glance. Was it a real cake? As it turns out, yes! You can buy a cake, make your own, or sneak in and use someone else’s cake (just kidding). It is a simple device that inserts into the top of the cake. That’s it. Brilliant.

Here’s a quick shot of the actual cakevase found on Kathleen’s site under “How To”:

It’s In The Stars is a personalized keepsake gift company. They have loads of positive testimonials from real customers. The site has good energy and a positive design. The director/owner paints a pretty clear picture of what areas she’d like help on. Right out of the gate, Elizabeth demonstrates she knows and cares about her customers.

“My best sales (and that’s not many) have come from publicity appearing in magazines and newspapers. Unfortunately that is not often possible to achieve every quarter, let alone every month.

The LoveStars (30-35 pages) and BabyStars (45-50 pages) bound reports are unique, personalised gifts that are ideal for anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, dating couples, engagements, Mothers Day, new babies, Valentines Day and weddings. Overall, 83% of my customers are women, with most buying BabyStars but a fair number of women buying LoveStars overall. Curiously, we still get a lot of men who buy the LoveStars reports – perhaps they have run out of romantic gift ideas and want to please their partner with a tangible gift that literally says something about their relationship!

According to the stats, the vast majority of visitors come to my site looking for a free monthly horoscope. They can read that, and are invited to sign up for the free monthly horoscope which contains additional information, the 2009 annual forecast, a 10% birthday discount on any report, and to receive special offers and surveys. I have grown my email list organically.

I sell my reports through my website and also through 20+ gift websites in Australia, New Zealand and recently, the UK. After each report, I send my customer an online survey to fill out. To date I have 60+ testimonials – I had one customer tell me they’d bought their report after recognising the name of their lecturer in New Zealand so she knew they were genuine customers. I hope you can help me!”

– Elizabeth Ball