Today we’d like to introduce you to Austin Pottery. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Austin Pottery was opened in May 2017. When Kit Adams, the owner of Clayways at the same location decided to retire her business after 21 years, a group of seven of us who were connected to Clayways in various ways banded together to purchase the property, open a new business, and continue this clay community under the name Austin Pottery Studio & Gallery.
We are fortunate to have a wonderful variety of skills among the group of owners as it helped significantly with our startup as well as ongoing operations. We have professional potters, business executives, tech industry experts, and attorneys among us! Four of the owners, Deb Dixon, Don Brimberry, Bob Boney, and Frank Thompson are involved in the day-to-day business operations and share management of the studio and gallery.
We’re primarily a teaching studio offering a large selection of classes and have a lovely gallery with work for sale from over 50 local clay artists. It is truly a terrific place to find affordable, hand-made gifts and shop local! We have an incredibly talented group of teachers on board who love what they do and the fact that our re-enrollment rate for each new class session is consistently 90-95% is a great indicator that our students enjoy their classes and working in the space. In addition to our 150 students in each 8-week class session, we also have another 35 folks who lease shelf space monthly to work in our co-op workspaces or have private studio space. Our studio technicians are equally awesome and are constantly busy loading and unloading kilns to keep everyone’s work moving through the studio promptly. When they’re not busy with the kilns, they’re mixing up glazes or at the pug mill reclaiming clay scraps for reuse or providing guidance to many of our potters.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Overall, this has been a tremendously positive experience. As many might assume with a large ownership group of seven, it could prove difficult! We all worked tirelessly in the beginning, prior to finalizing the property purchase, to establish a sound operational agreement that governs how we run our business and provides the parameters for our decision-making. Certain elements are managed by our studio managers and certain matters require agreement among the entire ownership team.
Startup was a little bit chaotic, only because it needed to happen very quickly. We had a fairly good structure in place for how we manage our class enrollments, maintain our rental spaces, and manage the gallery. We’ve certainly tweaked our procedures here and there to become more efficient. Selecting the right Point of Sale system is always one of the biggest challenges for new businesses. After some quick research and a little trial and error, we found one that fits our functionality needs and budget.
Of course, the COVID pandemic has been our most challenging period of all, as is certainly the case with almost all small businesses. We’ve weathered the storm since our reopening by establishing and maintaining very conservative safety protocol so that our customers feel comfortable.
Coming up on our 5-year mark, we feel very good about how all is going, and we hope to maintain our wonderful studio community for years to come!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Our group of owners were motivated to take on this later-life adventure after winding down our professional careers because of our passion for clay and our love for this particular studio community that has existed for so long. We believe that happy customers are at the core of our success, and we’ve therefore built our operations with excellent customer service as our guiding principle. One of our biggest perks is the ample studio access that is available to our community as part of their class or rental enrollments.
Austin Empty Bowl Project is an organization near and dear to our hearts. AEBP, in conjunction with the Central Texas Food Bank, raises a tremendous amount of money each year to help fund the Kids Café and Meals on Wheels for Kids programs. We are proud to be an ongoing sponsor of AEBP and host studio ‘bowl-a-thon’ events where we donate the clay and our potters donate their time to make loads of bowls for the event each year. Occasionally we are extra lucky to have local musicians who also share our love for AEBP bring live music to the studio for these events and inspire our potters to make more bowls!
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
We’re all in love with Austin! This is such a vibrant city with so much to offer. We particularly love that art and music is ingrained in the very fabric that is Austin. It feels like the Austin Pottery clay community is a natural fit for this city.
Not unlike many, we feel that traffic and parking are two of our least favorite aspects of Austin as it continues to grow. Despite the challenges, we continue to find a way to make it work for both our studio community as well as the gallery!
Contact Info:
- Email: info@atxpottery.com
- Website: www.atxpottery.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atxpottery/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/atxpottery
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/atxpottery/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/austin-pottery-studio-and-gallery-austin
