"Why Wholesale Nearly Broke My Pottery Business and Here's What Fixed It": Studio Sessions Podcast with Catie Miller

The other part of it was in 2016, I quit my museum job.

And then in 2017, I had my first child.

So motherhood has shaped a lot of what I've done as well.

I knew that I... needed to figure out how to like shift things online so that I could be home.

And not that our children didn't go to daycare.

Our children do go to daycare as well.

But I knew that I wouldn't be able to just like go set up at the market and have like a big, you know, tent with all the things.

So I figured out how to put everything online.

So a lot of my sales are online and they're direct sales through that.

So.

Did that help answer some of your questions? So it was like, well, I want to do this process.

That's

great.

But I need to figure out what could I make that I could do this process on that would work for wholesale.

And I was like, jewelry is small.

I can ship that really easily.

Yes.

And I can keep it in stock a lot easier than anything else.

So that's why I went...

That's perfect.

Because that helps like... people that I've talked to who are interested in doing, you know, potters who are interested in doing wholesale, like what works well locally and also what works well for shipping.

Because I had someone who wanted some like bowls, but I had to ship to California, which is completely on the opposite coast.

And that was miserable to ship.

So I'm like, well, if I do wholesale locally and I can drive a short distance, that works out perfectly.

But if I have to ship something as smaller is better.