🎧 East Fork: Where Pottery is Political Susan McHenry

Appears in the February 2023 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.

When Alex Matisse completed his apprenticeship with North Carolina potter Mark Hewitt in 2009, he purchased an old tobacco farm just north of Asheville. He set up a pottery studio there and began making pots for the 36-foot wood kiln he was building. Shortly after he began laying bricks for the kiln, he met his future wife, Connie, who was working on a nearby goat farm. The two started dating and soon fell in love. Connie moved in with Alex a few months later and helped him complete the wood kiln, along with other tasks at the farm. In 2010, Alex named the farm East Fork, after the community where the farm was located. Sales of his work in East Fork’s early days took place at wood kiln openings. When Alex’s close friend, John Vigeland, who had completed an apprenticeship with Daniel Johnson, visited the farm in 2013, the three began discussing how they might work together, envisioning what their ideal business might look like.

Creating and Growing a Brand

Alex had always been interested in building something larger and more impactful than what he thought being a solo maker would allow. But, he wanted his business to stand on its own merits rather than be associated with his family legacy (Alex is the great-grandson of the French painter Henri Matisse). In 2015, he purchased a Blaauw gas kiln and switched from wood firing to gas-reduction firing. With the goal of becoming a large-scale production pottery designer and manufacturer using a direct-to-consumer model, Alex realized that East Fork would need a larger workspace than the farm could accommodate. In 2018, they moved from the farm to their current manufacturing site in Asheville. Alex would serve as CEO, John as CFO, and Connie as creative director. Production in those early days was done entirely by hand. Before long, they realized that to keep growing, they would need to embrace more industrial methods. Today the company utilizes roller tools, steel molds, and RAM pressing to produce their line of modern, minimalist ceramic tableware.

East Fork tableware is made from a toasty-brown, speckled stoneware clay, glazed in six colors offered year round, as well as limited-edition colors offered seasonally, all of which can be harmoniously mixed and matched. They have two retail shops—one in Asheville and one in Atlanta, Georgia—where customers can see the dinnerware in a home-like setting. They also partner with select companies to offer complementary glassware, flatware, cookware, textiles, and pantry items. The idea is to be able to set your table from one shop, either in person or online.

As a brand, East Fork has a strong social-media presence, and storytelling has been an influential component of its marketing efforts. Connie has been the voice of East Fork, with her open and often vulnerable personal posts resonating deeply with their customer base. But, she has recently expanded her marketing team to bring in people from diverse backgrounds and points of view who will have a voice in the future of the East Fork brand.

East Fork produced close to 500,000 pieces of tableware in 2022, and the team is projected to produce over 650,000 pieces this year, making them one of the highest capacity dinnerware manufacturers in the US. To help finance this growth, they have begun working with investors, though the founding team remains majority owners. Currently, operations are run from two factories a few miles apart—one near Biltmore Village in Asheville where pots are made and bisque fired, and one down the road where everything is glazed, fired, warehoused, and shipped. They are looking to consolidate operations in the next few years in Western North Carolina at a facility that can offer 150,000–250,000 square feet, plus space for an office, headquarters, and childcare center for employees.

Developing Core Values

“Capitalism can cause a lot of harm,” observes Alex, “but there’s also a lot of good that can come from using a business as a force for good. It’s exciting to be able to provide stable, well-paying jobs for the folks in our community.” To that end, East Fork increased its minimum wage in April of 2022 to $22 per hour. This rate is based on the MIT Living Wage Calculator for a family of two working parents with two children in their city. Alex notes that “the only reason we can offer more money is because we are embracing new technology and automation.” Enhanced automation makes production not only more efficient, but also safer. All East Fork employees are full-time, receiving full benefits such as health insurance, dental and vision plans, paid time off, and vacation. 

Having grown from 20 to the current 125 employees in just a few years, the East Fork management team has been reassessing what a healthy workplace culture looks like. In 2017, they hired a facilitator and invited staff to help define the company’s core values and mission: accountability, compassion, equity, sincerity, and adaptive tenacity. Alex and Connie say those values drive the company’s daily operations. They are always asking how they can be more impactful in implementing these values. “The assumption is that as companies grow, they start to lose sight of their core values and mission,” says Connie. “If anything, we’re delving deeper and deeper into them.” Alex adds, “It’s easy to sit and talk about it, but you have to live it. You have to live through not living up to [those values], and actually understand what that experience is like, and why it’s so important, until it becomes an innate part of how you operate.” 

Their core values give them goals to keep returning to. Alex admits the management team wasn’t doing a great job early on. “We were miserable, and it wasn’t fun anymore,” he reflects, “Now after going through trials and tribulations that nearly broke us, we’ve come out the other side and it’s feeling like we’re in a really amazing place.” Executive leadership has gone through some changes, with Connie stepping into the role of CEO for the past two years. Alex will return to the CEO position this year, while Connie takes a sabbatical. In addition to that change, East Fork will be hiring their first VP level positions, bringing in leadership who have experience scaling direct-to-consumer brands from where they are now to where they want to be in five years.

Becoming Actively Anti-Racist

Connie, the driving force behind this initiative, says that East Fork’s commitment to become anti-racist doesn’t end with hiring a diverse workforce, noting, “Leadership has to ask ‘how does white supremacy show up in me?’” Through growing a business and hiring a more diverse workforce, she’s come to recognize they need to walk the walk daily. She admits the founding team made mistakes early on, mainly in promising more than they could deliver to their employees. The founders had to ask if what they were intending was having the impact they hoped. 

When they started hiring previously incarcerated people straight from prison, the team came up against their own biases and assumptions. “The founding team had a lot of personal work to do,” says Connie. “The work is never ending. Progress is slow, not linear. Everyone is coming to work with varied levels of self-awareness. Asking certain questions or raising certain topics can be triggering for some people. We need to ask ourselves what is the right amount of pressure to put on our employees.”

Creating a diverse staff in Asheville hasn’t been easy. The Black population there has gone from 13 to 7 percent over the last three years. The cost of housing is skyrocketing, and Connie says the area tends not to be desirable for people of color. The City of Asheville has a tax-credit program to encourage companies to diversify their workforces, but Connie is concerned that if companies don’t make diversity education a core component, they might do more harm than good. “You might have a diverse workforce, but not a healthy workplace. We need to provide proper training to support people and help them succeed. We want people to thrive.” In addition to a diverse manufacturing team that includes people of color and those who were formerly incarcerated, East Fork now has a diverse leadership group that includes BIPOC and LGBTQIA perspectives. 

Connie says they feel a responsibility to have conversations about race, not just with their employees, but with their customer base, too. She’d often use herself as an example, sharing mistakes she’s made, talking openly about the harm she’s caused, and what she’s done to change her behavior. 

Wealth Reclamation Project

When it comes to charitable contributions, the East Fork team chooses to donate to small grassroots organizations. “The philanthropy world tends to cater to the ego of the ones giving the money,” notes Alex, and there are often requirements around how the money can be used. By contrast, East Fork’s contributions have no stipulations on how an organization spends the money, and they have developed an innovative fundraising tool.

The Seconds program (sales of pots with minor flaws) allows East Fork to leverage their large customer base to easily raise significant funds for nonprofit organizations working toward racial equality in their community. The program requires a donation in order for a customer to gain access to the Seconds shop. When a customer wants to purchase a Seconds item, they click on a link to the featured organization, give a donation, and take a screenshot of their receipt. Upon submitting that receipt to the East Fork customer-care team, the customer is sent a special code, giving them access to the Seconds shop, where they can purchase items repeatedly during that quarter.

Environmental Impact and Embracing New Technologies

“Large-scale manufacturing of ceramics is one of the most carbon-intensive industries out there,” notes Connie. In an effort to minimize its carbon footprint, East Fork maintains both Climate Neutral and B Corp Certification status. Climate Neutral Certification companies are required to estimate their carbon emissions from making and selling their products, purchase eligible carbon credits, and develop and implement a carbon-reduction action plan that will be implemented over 1–2 years. Becoming B Corp Certified is a more rigorous process whereby a company must show it is meeting certain standards of performance, accountability, and transparency when it comes to employee benefits, charitable giving, and supply-chain practices. 

They look to Europe as a model, as it has the most stringent regulations in the ceramics industry. With the goal of stopping the use of fossil fuels by 2025, East Fork is exploring using a mix of biogas, solar, and electricity in their new factory. They are also currently working with an industrial-kiln manufacturer on designing a tunnel kiln that will inject inert gas that will put sections of the kiln into a reduction cycle. Currently, they purchase a custom clay body from Highwater Clays in Asheville, but this year, East Fork plans on making all their clay internally. Alex says this effort will allow them “to own as much of the process as we can from start to finish.” Some of these changes will drive up costs, but Alex predicts that as their process becomes more efficient, the company will be able to absorb some of those costs so their customers won’t have to.

In addition to growing technologically, East Fork added between 50–80 new employees between 2021–2022. For now, they’d like to maintain their current workforce so they can focus on profitability and stability. This recent employee growth is a goal that makes Alex most happy. “Growth for growth’s sake is not necessarily exciting. That’s ego stuff. But if we can grow and continue the impact of what we’re doing now on a larger and larger scale, that’s what’s really exciting.”

To learn more about East Fork, visit eastfork.com or follow on Instagram at @eastforkpottery.

the author Susan McHenry, is a studio potter, writer, and educator based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She has an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College. To learn more, visit susanmchenryceramics.com or follow on Instagram @susanmchenryceramics.