My Business Journey: Emma Bridgewater
@Emma_Bridgewater
I didn't plan for any of this. As a young person, I didn't study ceramics or go to art school, nor did I do law or accountancy or anything that might prepare me for business. I did know about starting a business because I watched my father do it, but I could never say I knew what I was getting into.
The idea for a pottery business didn't gel until I went to Stoke-on-Trent. I had a very clear idea in my head of what I wanted to make – a gift for my mother – but no idea how. It was an extraordinary revelation for me. I got off the train from Euston and bounced through the potholes across the city in a taxi to a backstreet pottery where I found a terrific craftsman. But even before I got there, something really got hold of my heart.
It was a combination of two things. I grew up knowing more than I realised about ceramics. My mother and both my grannies had their domestic china, so whether I was doing the flowers with one of my grannies or organising lunch with mum, I knew this stuff was really important. Then, suddenly, in Stoke-on-Trent I was driving past the likes of Minton's, Spode – all these big names I recognised. And yet, it was clear something dreadful was going on. I’d never seen what the post-industrial Midlands looked like. I felt this huge pang of connection with a place that I didn't realise was facing such cataclysmic collapse. There was something in me that engaged there and then.
When we were inside the little workshop, I suddenly had this vision – a colourful kitchen dresser covered in mismatched, decorated pottery. Suddenly, bingo! I knew the business was going to happen. I'd taken the drawings for four shapes with me and the model maker did a beautiful job of turning them into a mug, bowl, jug and a dish.
I also wanted to put the whole thing right. Over the years, I’d met people who'd been taken by ceramic or china companies to Indonesia to train the workers there, before being sent home and sacked. It seemed to me to be flagrantly destructive, so suddenly I was a woman on a mission. The thought was, “Somebody's got to do something about this and, oh dear, it looks like it's going to be me.”
After going back to London with my four prototypes, I experimented with hand printing. It rebirthed a very simple, traditional technique of cutting a sponge into simple motifs and hand printing on the ware. It occurred to me about the same time that the industry had completely lost touch with its market. My mother's kitchen was archetypical of the 1970s – nothing matched – and yet, it was one of the most welcoming and popular places to be. Her style was her gift to me and the company is sort of an homage to her.
@Emma_Bridgewater
I felt very sure of what the aesthetic of the business would look like. My conviction slightly outpaced my abilities as a designer, but courage and conviction will get you a long way. At 23, I didn't know how much I didn't know, and that's one of the greatest weapons in business. As the years move on and I'm not so much a part of the day-to-day running of Emma Bridgewater, I'm trying to think about another project, but it scares me. I don’t think I can replicate that crazy confidence I had at the beginning of my working life. There's no reason not to risk everything.
After glazing and firing my samples, I put aside the ones I thought were nearly right. Then, I took a stall at the Covent Garden Market to sell the samples I knew I didn't want to replicate. There was a feeding frenzy right from the word go and that was very exciting. A lot of it was about luck and timing. Having set aside my best samples, I photographed them and rang up probably 150-200 shops to make sales appointments. They pretty much all ordered, and many were also an enormous help in teaching me what I needed to know.
In April 1985, I did my first trade fair. But by that time, I'd already got quite a lot of customers. The ware was expensive because I was buying it from a pottery, but my maker told me I didn’t want to be making this stuff myself. He said his team could do the decorating once I’d worked it out. My deal with myself was I could run off a certain amount of debt. I pushed it as far as the bank manager would let me!
@Emma_Bridgewater
It's an unusual opinion but I’ve learnt that being a woman in business is jolly useful. I was happy to be under the radar and be ignored while I got on with what I was trying to achieve. There were lots of times when I'd moved to a different house in London, the neighbours complained about the big pottery delivery that used to go to the basement. The council came to close me down but the guy who came around drove me around southwest London to help me find me a studio. I’ve found that if you’re excited about what you’re doing, other people tend to be too.
Today, our factory exerts quite a powerful influence on people who visit it. The collectors come in droves but, even when it's engineers or bank managers, they get all misty eyed about it. Very few of them think that anything like this exists anymore. It’s my ignorant dream of what a factory should be primarily – so it does have a particular appeal.
Even though Matthew [Rice] and I have been divorced for about five years now, he still does quite a bit of the designing and I write the brief. But for 30 odd years, we worked on it together. We've been having some very nice sessions in the studio recently where I say, “Okay, come on, let's get back to pattern making. Let's get out all the sponges we're interested in.” We’ve always got several ideas on the go, and we use those sponges to make great big sheets of informal, fast printed stuff. Then you realise, “Oh, I like that. That works well but that's a disaster.” You're always looking for stimulation while you're designing.
The natural world is where almost all design finds its inspiration. But a lot of what we produce is also about connection. So, when you’re designing, you’re trying to find the sentiment and that can come from anywhere. Just don't go and look at what's in the shops – that's boring. Build an internal world full of collected things that can help you pin down emotion. That’s probably the definition of good design – trying to catch the moment and also trying to make something that will still be around years from now.
@Emma_Bridgewater
Entrepreneurship – especially in the design world – is often a lonely road. It's also an incredibly brave thing. As a designer, you want someone to talk to and have very close relationships with. For example, it's been lovely designing with one of my daughters recently. Ultimately, to be a business owner, you have to be tenacious. It’s a condition, really, rather than a characteristic. I also really can't stand it when people take no for an answer. Come on, keep going.
I can’t quite believe I’ve been doing this for 40 years. I’m pleased the business is learning to stand on its own feet. I hope there are another 40 years ahead of making In Stoke-on-Trent, because if I think about the totality of it, the privilege of my life is to have employed those people at a time when it looked as if that wasn't going to happen anymore. We’ve created some kind of brilliant fantasy oasis that’s disproportionately impactful because it's so cheerful in a badly beaten-up area. We’ve been a beacon for people in the city.
I’m astonished to see a lot of my friends contemplating their retirement. It makes me feel so bored. It seems to me that, if you've got the ability to do something useful in the world, you should be doing it. But then I had that conversation with a friend who'd been some sort of city tycoon. He said, “Look, you just think I've been making money, but I’ve had a difficult working life. It's been tough and I haven't expressed myself or had much agency. Of course I'm excited to retire.” So, I guess if you've ploughed your own furrow and had the independence that running your own business gives, retirement is a harder concept to understand.
The idea that at 60 you stop and think about going on cruises or cycling holidays doesn't connect for me at all. I will be doing something else. I've got about three ideas on the go at the moment, and I’ll have an increasingly arm's length relationship with the Bridgewater business. For anyone looking to start something new in later life, I say this: find something that you care about. If you don’t know where to start, volunteering is a great idea. There's so much need and we have a lot of resources in terms of life experience. We should be trying to find ways to feed all that back into the world.
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