Manu Tesone pointed at his shiny new kiln that can bake glaze-covered clay at over 2000 degrees in the backroom of his company’s spot in the business park across from the Lebanon Municipal Airport. He flipped a switch on the wall, turning fans on with a whoosh and wall vents cranking open to expose the bright outdoors through the slats.
“We didn’t know about this until we got here,” Tesone said, beaming as he explained how the ventilation system in what had been prior tenant Nordica skis’ paint room also would be perfect for the heat and fumes generated by the $4,700 commercial-grade kiln. “This space just keeps giving.”
Tesone went to Harvard Business School and spent 18 years working on Wall Street in finance and private capital, but he’s forsaken spreadsheets and suits for clay, glazes, potter’s tools and a craftsman’s apron. The 45-year old, Argentine-born entrepreneur last year bought Big Ceramic Store, a Sparks, Nev.-based online retailer of ceramic crafts supplies, from a group of e-commerce companies his former firm managed. Last week, he opened an East Coast branch of the business in West Lebanon.
Big Ceramic Store’s 5,000-square-foot space on Commerce Avenue is part pottery studio with wheels and kilns open to the public, part gallery for the work of ceramic crafts artists, and part warehouse and order fulfillment center serving customers on the eastern half of the U.S.
Tesone envisions the West Lebanon location as a model for other ceramics stores and studios across the country. The plan is for Big Ceramic Store to distribute supplies to the stores while letting them keep their local identities, similar to the way Ace Hardware and True Value affiliate with local stores.
There are few crafts more distant from our tech-obsessed world than ceramics. Solitary, quiet, patient, hands immersed in the earth’s elements of cool clay and water, the ceramic artist practices a craft whose techniques are as old as human history. Ceramic studios operate in a time-warp, too, most of them still run by artists or small-business owners who provide a community space for potters to learn and sharpen their craft.
“Ceramic stores are already doing good with the studio part,” Tesone said. But he believes they can increase their traffic and business if they can offer a greater selection of the glazes, clays, tools and equipment every potter requires: “I’m trying to bring all the different parts of the art and industry — studio, store, gallery — together into one physical location.”
Big Ceramic Store sells 12,000 different products from more than 55 different manufacturers: glazes from Amaco and Speedball, clays from Laguna and Minnesota Clay, tools from Kemper and Dirty Girls, kilns from Skutt and ConeArt, to mention a fraction. Tesone said Big Ceramic Store is the No. 1 retailer of ceramics supplies based on website traffic. He declined to discuss financials, but said the store sells to more than 25,000 customers annually and the “average order” includes 10 to 12 items. Sixty percent of sales are to hobbyists, while studios and schools account for 2-0% each, he said.
Big Ceramic Store was launched in 1999 by Cindi Anderson, an amateur potter, and her husband, Glen Miller, both tech industry vets, when Anderson wasn’t able to find supplies she wanted online (dial-up internet access was still common then and e-commerce was only in its infancy). They opened a warehouse and fulfillment center in Reno, Nev., a common base of operations for online retailers because of the lower cost of warehouse space and labor and because the city is on the border with California, making shipping convenient into the biggest consumer market in the country (the company has since moved to a new warehouse in adjacent Sparks, Nev.).
Then in 2013, Tesone and his partner, Harvard classmate Matthew Holmes, who had pulled together a group of investors to acquire niche, specialty e-commerce companies, bought Big Ceramic Store from the couple to anchor a portfolio that eventually grew to six websites, including KillerMotorSports.com, which sold go karts and minibikes, and SeriousPuzzles.com, which sold jigsaw puzzles.
When the partners sold their websites and dissolved their company last year, Tesone — who by this time had moved from New York to Norwich with his wife and young girls for the quality of life — bought Big Ceramic Store for his own.
“I got to know the business and really love it,” said Tesone, who himself is not a potter. “I also realized this business has untapped potential that under a more focused ownership could do really well.”
One of the first things Tesone said he realized was that Big Ceramic Store needed an East Coast warehouse and fulfillment center in addition to its base in Sparks, Nev., in order to reduce shipping times to customers. In October, he signed a lease for space in the airport business park and put out on town listservs that he was looking to hire employees. Among those who have joined the three-person team in West Lebanon — another works at the Nevada location — is Georgia Donnelly, of Lebanon, a professional potter who has worked at both of the Upper Valley’s two premier craftsmakers, Simon Pearce and Farmhouse Pottery.
“I work in the toy store as far as I’m concerned,” Donnelly said last week as she switched between checking inventory, managing Big Ceramic Store’s social media, and juggling phone calls and emails from customers.
As a niche online retailer, Tesone said it sometimes is necessary to manage the expectations of customers, who measure everything against the behemoth Amazon. Although Big Ceramic Store’s website lists more than 12,000 items for sale, the company keeps only about half of them in stock because it doesn’t make business sense to warehouse items that may sell only a couple times — or once every couple of years (some high-quality tools are made by hand by a potter working out of their home).
Because customers were asking why, unlike Amazon, Big Ceramic Store didn’t show stock quantities on its product listings, Tesone said, one night he wrote a 960-word explanatory “manifesto” that he posted to the company’s Facebook page. Big Ceramic Store actually tried following Amazon and listing stock quantities of items but “immediately we regretted the decision,” Tesone wrote, “because it dramatically affected demand for less-known products by focusing attention on the ‘best selling’ products,” in particular those made in small quantities by local manufacturers.
Instead, Big Ceramic opted to invest in an online platform and communication tools developed by German programmers, that lets customers know immediately what items are in stock and what items a customer will need to wait for, giving them the option to cancel or revise the order.
“We can’t be Amazon, but we can support our pottery community — and the last time I checked, a company that sells TVs and vacuum cleaners had no interest in doing that,” Tesone wrote. “What would our community turn into if anything anyone could find ended up being the top 10 best selling clays and glazes? It’s clear to me: we would all be making the same coffee mugs very soon after that.”
In fact, a lot of ceramic supplies manufacturers withhold their products from listing on Amazon because they fear being inundated with orders they can’t fulfill, potentially alienating their customer base and undercutting the benefit of higher sales. Potters and ceramic artists also still like buying supplies in brick-and-mortar stores, where they can feel the tools and see the color and tones of the glazes. Tesone estimated that online sales of ceramic supplies accounts for only about 10% of the industry’s overall sales — another reason he sees upside in opening a retail location despite the shift to online sales in other sectors.
“Potters are artists. That’s why they get into it,” Tesone said. The artists and craftspeople, although they may frequently work solo, like to meet at stores and studios and discuss materials, techniques and tips with other potters, similar to the way fiber artists and home brewers like associating.
“Pottery studios is where you make the customer. We’ve never seen our purpose to drive offline out of business.” Tesone said.
One customer Tesone doesn’t have, however, is himself — he doesn’t “throw pots,” as potters call it.
“Not yet,” he said, before sheepishly admitting, “I get asked that question a lot.”
John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com.
