Ten years ago, Cake Agency founder and CEO, Chris Thomas, answered an unexpected phone call. Putting that phone down a few minutes later, he thought: "This has legs, this can work."
That call was Cake Agency's first inbound enquiry. A decade later, Cake Agency is a 30-plus-person team based in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, one of a handful of Shopify Premier Partners in the UK, and shortlisted for four categories at the UK Ecommerce Awards 2026.
We’ve been told that we have a unique approach to ecommerce. Rest assured, the call is firmly coming from inside the house - we know our approach is unique, but we’d never have it any other way. We weren’t founded by marketers, former Shopify alumni, or a team of investors; Cake was founded from scratch by former merchants, and we take a retail-first approach to ecommerce as a result. We’ve never felt pressure to deliver work in any other way, and the four nominations here are proof that our approach works.
The Nominations
We've been shortlisted across the following categories:
- UK Ecommerce Large Agency of the Year
- Fashion / Apparel or Footwear Ecommerce Website of the Year (P&Co)
- B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (P&Co)
- UK Ecommerce Website of the Year (P&Co)
Large Ecommerce Agency of the Year: Ten Years in the Making
Our nomination for Large Ecommerce Agency of the Year is a poignant story - reflecting what Cake has built over a decade.
In 2021, with a team of 21, we entered Cake into the Small Agency of the Year category - coming out highly commended, but still missing out on first place. Rather than apply again year on year, we wanted to wait until Cake was performing at its peak before running it back for another shot.
Now a team of 33, we’re exceptionally proud of the transformative year we’ve had. In the past 12 months alone, we've launched some of our best ecommerce websites, grown our annual turnover, welcomed 12 new team members and achieved Shopify Premier Partner status.
We even launched our own refreshed identity in February 2026, a statement of confidence for who Cake is as an agency as we enter our tenth year, which is an achievement we want to cap off with as much recognition and as well-stocked a trophy cabinet as we can.
“Ten years in, being shortlisted as one of the top ecommerce agencies in the country - it’s the kind of validation that makes you want to push even harder. We've always believed our approach works, but having the industry agree is the proof.” - Cheryl Thomas, Agency Director - Cake Agency
The Work: P&Co
The remaining three nominations centre on a single project; the result of a near-decade-long relationship with our closest client.
P&Co is one of the most successful independent fashion brands to come out of the Midlands in the past two decades. Founded in 2013, P&Co has established a cult following, an award-winning loyalty program, and a refined creative direction that has sharpened significantly over the past couple of years. With offices only a five-minute walk apart, P&Co and Cake’s relationship began in 2018, and we’ve gone from strength to strength with the brand since.
By summer 2025, P&Co had opened a new flagship store in London’s Spitalfields district and were ready for a digital presence that matched the heightened level of quality the brand had established for their product and creative offering.
With discovery taking place throughout 2025, and development throughout the spring and summer, in September 2025 we launched P&Co’s third Shopify Plus store.
The goal was to create a more visually expressive site that could let the brand showcase its collections and campaigns to a higher level, whilst letting customers explore pieces to the fullest. Our process took us from deep immersion in P&Co's customer behaviour, through customer journey mapping and style direction, to full UI prototyping - all before a single line of code was written.
The result is a flagship ecommerce site as expansive as shopping in P&Co’s brick-and-mortar store, championed by a shoppable lookbook and cart drawer upsells tailored by gender, all of which was later translated to the brand's mobile app too.
“Working with Cake for such a long period has been transformative for P&Co. Over that time, I’ve built relationships with the different teams there, and it’s always felt like a genuine extension of our own team. It was a real joy to work so closely with them on this project; from finalising the website design together all the way through to developing new features that elevated our customers’ online experience. They’ve been a huge part of helping us operate with confidence and freedom- we know we have a team we can lean on.”
Sam Bacon - Ecommerce Manager, P&Co
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The UK Ecommerce Awards ceremony takes place later this year. Whatever the outcome, making the shortlist is validation that, at ten years in, the approach we've championed works.
Founded by retailers, for retailers. Built in Birmingham.
You can follow along with the status of the awards on Instagram and LinkedIn.
You can also check out P&Co’s ecommerce store at Pand.co
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