Bangerang Bake Shop in Money magazine

There's an advertisement for John Hancock Financial Services featuring Nicole Mahler of Bangerang Bake Shop (formerly Fat Daddy Bake Shop; see our interview and review) in the June issue of Money magazine. You can read it by going to www.pivotalconversations.com and clicking on "Money Magazine." We'll be featuring more information about the business of running a bakery here soon. Here's a snippet:

To protect her personal assets, she incorporated and insured the business. She also wanted to safeguard her ideas, so she turned to James Hultquist, a partner in the Chicago office of the law firm Reed Smith. He protects intellectual property for both corporate and small-business clients.

James Hultquist: "When startup companies have new or very unique ideas, protecting their intellectual property should be high on the list. A lot of times, entrepreneurs don't do that early on, and it costs them money later if someone tries to copy their ideas."

Hultquist's first step was to find ways to protect one of Mahler's ideas: shipping the cupcakes in Mason jars.

Nicole Mahler: "I wanted to mail them without spending an arm and a leg on shipping. I saw some Mason jars and the idea just clicked. No one else is doing it."

Hultquist also suggested that she conduct a trademark search to protect the brand identity of her company.

Hultquist: "You don't want to get too far down the road in using your name in commerce and find that another company that does business in your space has a similar one." Thanks to Etsy's high traffic, Mahler's bakeshop grew faster than she had ever imagined. She found herself in the kitchen 13 to 16 hours a day to keep her store stocked with her 32 flavors. Mahler is now planning a freestanding website to use as her main marketing venue until her revenue grows. She has also gotten some free publicity from blogs for cupcake lovers.