Creating A Second Life For A Retail Classic

Heath Ceramics is not a newcomer to the world of retail. Founded by San Francisco artist Edith Heath in the 1940’s – Heaths earthenware ceramics, uniquely textured designs and unusual color patterns have set the brand apart from its earliest days when all the pieces sold were hand made by Edith Heath.

As the brand’s popularity grew – first on the West Coast, then nationwide – Heath became less an artisanal ceramics firm that produced a handful of (price) pieces each year, and more a retail venture.  The firm found itself a factory in the shipyards of Sausalito making pieces formed on a wheel to machine-assisted production.  The machine made pots (the machines were a custom design by Edith’s husband Brian Heath) were based on the original hand-thrown creations that were used as prototypes.  Prototypes.

And the brand caught on – by 1949, the company was producing 100,000 pieces a year and grossing $5,000 a month (or around $52,0000 adjusted for inflation).  And the brand also endured, and gained popularity, albeit among a select class of design enthusiasts.  Heath has never been a household name in quite the way Fiestaware is – but among people who knew plates they had lots of cache.

What they didn’t have, as of 2003  with over 60 years in business, was any cash.  When designers and partners  Catherine Bailey and Robin Petravic accidently stumbled on the firm in the early 2000’s – the firm was far past its mid-century prime.  The firm was no longer profitable – and struggling to pay its utility bills and employees.  And it was looking for a buyer.

And so they bought it – a process that Catherine Bailey told INC was “easier than buying a house.”

The couple has spent the last decade and a half rehabbing the business – the wholesale model that worked for the first six decades of its life was scrapped in favor of going direct-to-consumer (about a decade before that became the de rigeur way to enter consumer retail). They’ve also expanded in bridal registries, built an experimental retail destination in San Francisco designed to “bring together a wide array of makes, tinker, bakers and small-scale operators into a single creative space,” according to Bailey.

“We don’t want to be forced to do things we don’t want to do.”

They also didn’t want to get caught up in what they called the “scale trap” wherein firms start having to sideline creativity in favor of upping volume to meet their current demands.  For a design base firm, Bailey noted, that means there is a risk of stagnating in one’s offering – and falling into a safe zone of always offering the safest, most easily mass marketable thing.

Heath has i moved to avoid getting pulled along – and into doing the kind of work they don’t want to do – by creating limited-release lines sold only in select showrooms.  It is part of what Baily called Heath latter day “slow business” approach to growth.

The firm, since Bailey and Petravic took over, has grown notably and considerably – mostly according ot its owners, because of the slow and steady approach to expansion they have taken since embarking on a relaunch. Today they firm employs 246 people (all of whom are paind regularly) up from the 25 that were there when the couple took over.  They have also upped sales from  $1.2 million in their early days to  $30 million annually last of last year.  If things continue moving forward, the firm will be wholly debt free by the end of next year.

“We’re setting things up for the next generation,”  Petravic said.

And though the brand continue to be popular among design enthusiasts – it is also beginning to gain the kind of mainstream buzz that Heath was created in its early days in the middle of the 20th century.  And though the ceramics it makes today at first glance resemble the design first hand thrown by Edith Heath 70 years ago – Heath has in the last two decades has grown up into a thoroughly 21 century retail operation in both how it reaches in customers – and its curated and customized approach to building the business and the brand.