Polar Puffs and Cakes: Leveraging the Necessity to Get Online

Records show that 83% of small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore have digital transformation strategies. However, 54% of them delayed their plans due to COVID-19, despite the necessity of digitalisation at the time.

Even with an impressive number of SMEs adopting digital schemes, only 5% consider their efforts as successful. A digital game plan isn’t enough. You need to have the best resources, as well as a reliable online solutions partner, to scale your brand online.

Amidst the economic distress, Polar Puffs and Cakes are among those whose online venture proved to be a success. Find out why they were unfazed by the digital shift and the crucial role Vodien played in their online progress.

Behind the 95-year legacy

Polar Puffs and Cakes grew their business through their appetising selection of pastries, among them their well-loved signature Curry Puffs. Formerly Polar Café founded in 1926, their early heydays established them as the go-to shop for politicians, businessmen, and lawyers. Among their patron was Lim Bo Seng, one of Singapore’s most prominent entrepreneurs.

Ninety-five years later, they now boast 29 stores all over the country and have since then expanded their menu to more than 100 varieties of pastries, cakes, and other confectionaries.

Having withstood World War II, they rode along with Singapore’s rapid economic progress after the strife. What they didn’t expect was another global dilemma that would again put their business at risk.

When the pandemic hit, it changed customer attitude and rendered physical storefronts useless along with the lockdowns. It disrupted local businesses, including Polar Puffs and Cakes.

But more than that, it presented a valuable opportunity to further their operations and leverage the changing business landscape.

Getting Online

Leon Wong, Polar Puffs and Cakes’ IT manager, shares how some consumer behaviours changed for good when the pandemic ensued. The implementation of lockdowns demanded necessary shifts. This led to an increase in both businesses and consumers getting online.

“Physical stores remain an important driver for sales, however, ecommerce has become an undeniably powerful opportunity for retail businesses, such as ours, to increase sales and reach an almost unlimited new customer base,” Wong said.

Getting online gave them a digital storefront they can operate 24/7. While it decreased the number of resources it takes to run a business, it posed a need to have a website that drives profitable traffic and is optimised for speed and seamless performance.

How Vodien Helped

“Prior to hosting with Vodien, our website was managed and hosted by outsource web development company because of our limited IT resources,” Wong recalls. “All seemed to work initially, but when traffic and transactions increased, we faced challenges with the support model.”

Before Vodien, he talked to a few web hosting providers for weeks and failed to find the right solution for their website. None of them was able to meet his data migration demands. When he came to talk with Vodien, he especially noted the team’s professionalism and efficiency in clearing his questions.

Wong ultimately closed the deal with Vodien based on four key factors: speed, scalability, security, and reliability. This led them to host their website on the agency’s VPS hosting environment. They were able to customise their own operating system, install applications, and support traffic surges with its enhanced SG server resources.

“The ecommerce website is running smooth and without major issues,” Wong commends.

Along with the technical efficiencies and the robust resource quality, Wong is also grateful for the prompt response to troubleshooting, maintenance, and other issues. “Vodien offers 24/7 SuperSupport which guarantees a solution from most problems in less than 6 hours.”

For Wong, a great hosting solution should have dedicated resources and elevated security. It should also allow clients to have complete rein over their hosting environment. This makes Vodien a prime partner towards profitable ecommerce growth.

Make it online with Vodien

Getting online requires more than knowing what actions to take. You need reliable resources to operate a website that drives your revenue. More importantly, you need a trusted partner that will deliver prompt and relentless support to help you extend the best services to your customers.

Polar Puffs and Cakes shares a solid alliance with Vodien and entrusts its online success to expertise and experience. In return, Vodien provides consistently high-quality resources and exemplary support to help the business get to where it wants to be.