By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 01.07.2010 (The Sydney Morning Herald): A former Wall Street investment banker who gave up the big bucks for a career in cupcakes has proven she still has a head for numbers, this week opening her third store.

Ghazaleh Lyari worked as a banker with start-up technology companies during the dot.com boom and bust, helping at least one 10-person operation transform itself into a 5000-strong company.

Working for blue-chip companies in the US and Australia for 16 years, she handled multibillion-dollar deals and regularly put in hours that would make most minds boggle.

However all along, Lyari said her intention was to educate herself in all aspects of the business world with the view to eventually starting her own enterprise.

In 2003, she felt the time was right for a dramatic career change, thinking “this is as good as it’s going to be here”.

Lyari began exploring different consumer products including fashion and childcare, when she was exposed to the cupcakes market in the US.

On moving to Australia, where her family had migrated from Iran in 1984, Lyari also found a distinct gap in the cupcakes market for “something a little more elegant and sophisticated with a significant focus on quality of ingredients”.

“When I look at cupcakes with purple and green icing, it attracts my four-year-old son, but it doesn’t really attract someone like me,” the 43-year-old said.

So Lyari began pursuing her idea, taking pastry classes to better understand the language of the business.

But finding a prime location proved trying, and at one point she almost gave up on the idea, returning to investment banking in Australia for 18 months.

Thankfully she was offered a store at Westfield Bondi Junction in June 2008, and Ghermez Cupcakes was kickstarted.

“I basically did both jobs and started building the business for the next six months with immense support from my husband and my parents,” Lyari said.

A redundancy from her position at Citigroup, which she said she had been planning to quit anyway, led her to focus solely on her new business.

“It was a blessing in disguise because I could now really focus on the business full-time and I have never looked back,” she said.

Lyari set up the Ghermez Cupcakes bakery in an unorthodox fashion, giving the six chefs – who work from a bakery next to one of the stores – the opportunity to mix, bake and decorate.

“In order to keep my staff interested and make them feel valued to the team, we rotate the responsibilities so they don’t have to do the same thing everyday like a factory worker,” she said.

In two years the business has grown 30 per cent year-on-year, and has proven to be “recession proof”.”People still celebrate birthdays, weddings and resort to little luxuries like chocolates and cakes because $3.80…is not going to break the bank, but still gives that moment of happiness,” Lyari said.

On Wednesday Lyari opened her third store, in Sydney’s George Street, and hopes to further carve out the Ghermez Cupcakes brand as a national brand.

“At this stage I strongly believe that being the best in class is the best way to go and that’s my strategy,” says Lyari, who hopes to own stores in Victoria and Queensland by the end of 2011

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