Don't even think of wandering into the KiwiCakes street frontage in Kamo for a happy half-hour of browsing through the company's ranges of cake-decorating and cake-making products, although many people do.
What they find is a street frontage to an on-line business, with the stock out of sight in the distribution area behind the "shop".
As owner Sandra Boston says, "it's for people who have done their research and know what they want. They can come in and check that the item will meet their requirements - and save on the postage. Or they may still want to look and feel before they buy and that's fine."
The staff would happily look for an alternative if the item did not suit, but a request to randomly view a range of items would be politely declined.
The former jeweller, a keen cake decorator, started Kiwicakes as a purely online business to supply cake-making and cake-decorating items, thinking it would be a modest home-based earner while she was having her family. To her surprise, the business grew rapidly, never faltering through recession, acquiring a national and international clientele.
Eventually, Ms Boston had to hire two storage spaces and even expanded into her mother Betty's home. When these arrangements reached bursting point she went looking for a new base - researching online of course - finding what she wanted at 1C Grant St in the Kamo shopping centre.
Ms Boston recently hired her fifth employee, partly to man the "bricks and mortar" from 10am-2pm, because the team out the back were too flat out to keep going out to the counter.
She said she started the business because she had noted there were very few specialist shops selling cake decorating and making supplies. Traditionally these outlets had only survived by making cakes and icing cakes as well. The internet has meant a business like hers could grow at its own pace and become viable without having to operate as a shop.
Despite the meteoric rise of online shopping, Sandra Boston believes traditional retailers are not going to be wiped out by online trading but do need to make the internet work for them.
"I talk to people all the time who are struggling with their retail business but I find they are often loathe to use the internet to generate interest in their business and build customer relationships," she says. "They say 'I haven't got the time for that stuff' but honestly, if they are sitting twiddling their thumbs all day in their shops, surely they could spare some time to get on their laptop and start making Facebook work for them."
"I honestly don't think it matters whether people are offering services or products, they should at the very least incorporate Facebook into their operation. It's easy, quick and free."
Ms Boston updates her Facebook site several times a day with information on anything from specials, to new products and developments. Customers are constantly contributing to the site and interacting with each other, posting photos of cakes and discussing techniques.
KiwiCakes supplies equipment for amateur and professional cake decorators, to a huge range of themes for children and adults' parties, but specialising in Kiwiana items. The company has scored the New Zealand distributorship for edible versions of previously inedible items - like petal dusts, lustre dusts, food markers, sparkling sugars, glitter shapes and photographic images. Not to mention nozzles, cupcake stands, macaron-making equipment (the latest craze), red lips cookie cutters and silicone moulds.
The company is now processing an average of 100 orders a day. Many overseas clients are Kiwis holding nostalgia parties, and have included New Zealand embassies.
KiwiCakes products will feature in the 2012 television series of Cafe Secrets where presenter Julie Le Clerc goes to cafes and restaurants around the country, cooks with the chefs and makes an item.