The Mug by East Fork Pottery featured by Courier

Lindsey Zinno

Courier: One Mug at a Time

"But what East Fork actually doing is attempting to blend the advances in repeatability and manufacturing process with the age-old potter’s concern about how to make a ‘good pot’."

Disruption – one mug at a time. Article by Courier. How North Carolina-based company East Fork borrows tricks from direct-to-consumer startups to bring its traditional pottery to a mass audience. What makes a ‘good’ pot? Should it be durable or delicate? Ornately patterned or simply glazed? Does it need to be sustainable? These sound like questions that might concern a small, independent potter – the sort of person who might dream of one day turning their small business into a vast, global manufacturer of tableware – and it was.

In pockets of this quintessentially rural American state, the potter’s wheels never stopped turning. As the North Carolina Pottery Centre proudly declares: ‘If North America has a “pottery state” it must be North Carolina.’ For this community, still tied to the process of making pottery by hand, the search for a ‘good pot’ became a case-by-case quandary. Alex explains: ‘Because we have this background as potters we’ve been really allowed to explore how we think about details, like the curve or the internal volume of a shape. Our designs don’t originate on a computer screen, they start in a serious practise at the potter’s wheel. We started with an open, exploring and earnest love of the actual craft. And we’ve continued in that vein ever since, in the belief that quality is enough to attract an audience.’ It is a philosophy that appears to have served them well. East Fork has come a long way since 2015. As Connie explains: ‘People still think of us a workshop with a few wheels in a barn in Maddison County. That’s what we were, but we’ve grown a lot since.’ As Vigeland says, ‘Currently we’re making 10,000 units a month, which when Alex set up shop back in 2009, was more like 1,000 a year.’ A good example of the scale they have reached using their direct-to-consumer business model can be seen in the sales of their best-selling $36 coffee mugs. In April, East Fork told their customers that they’d be selling 1,704 limited edition mugs in their physical retail store in Asheville. A queue formed and by 4pm they’d sold out. But more importantly, traffic on their online store spiked by 500%. Alex, who takes on the role of the traditional CEO but also oversees these complex production demands, notes that John, the CFO, ‘likes to joke that we’ve compressed the Industrial Revolution into five years’. In October East Fork moved away from its first home and into a new industrial factory in downtown Asheville, North Carolina.

Read the full article, here.

is a vessel for solving problems.

is a vessel for congee.

is a vessel for rocky road.

is a vessel for lemons.

is a vessel for heaping salads.

is a vessel for coq au vin.

is a vessel for hot coffee.

is a vessel for cherries.

is a vessel for new approaches.

is a vessel for arroz con leche.

is a vessel for new employment.

My cart

Recycled Glassware

Meet Lagoon

Solid Wood Bowls

Marbled Linen Napkins

Linen Oven Mitts

White Oak Cutting Board

Etched Thistle Glassware

Colorband Glassware

The Candle in Almond Flower

About East Fork

Our Values

Community Impact

Courier: One Mug at a Time