Pot Luck

The pottery has a shopping emporium and a popular café, and also offers pottery tours and a range of exciting creative classes for adults and children. It sells its designer pottery in-store and online and is building a fantastic local and national profile. But, like many small businesses, Grayshott’s marketing used to be done on an ad-hoc basis.

There was no-one in charge of marketing and money was being spent mostly on print advertising, with no idea at all of whether it was bringing any return. The company’s website was old and didn’t represent the business in the best light and, while Grayshott had a presence on Facebook, it wasn’t updated regularly or focused to any particular audience.

“We knew we needed to do things better,” says Grayshott’s Julie Stevens, who is now responsible for the marketing function. “We just didn’t know what ‘better’ looked like, or how to achieve it. It was time to talk to someone professional, and we were given KPC’s contact details by a staff member.”

“The first time I went to visit Grayshott Pottery, I came away hugely excited,” says KPC Managing Director, Deborah Kingsley. “They were hand-crafting all this fantastic pottery; really bright, colourful, joyful pieces, and I could see that they knew they needed to make more of it but weren’t sure where to start.”

“This is exactly the sort of project we love at KPC – a business that is ready to get some professional advice because they want to expand, or change direction or do things better. There’s nothing better for me and my team than to see real potential in a business and work out how to turn that potential into sales and growth.”

Change doesn’t happen overnight. So KPC and Grayshott spent some time working together on understanding the business, its target customers, its unique selling points and thinking carefully about where the business wanted to be in the future. That exercise resulted in some key opportunities:

• To extend the brand beyond the pottery building and out into the local, national and international community
• To encourage people to see Grayshott’s pieces as desirable lifestyle accessories
• To increase the average spend in-store and online by offering statement pieces and showing how handcrafted pottery makes a unique gift for any occasion

After this initial work, KPC and Grayshott began thinking about new ways to put the local pottery in front of potential customers, and decided to add an online shop to the company’s website.

“We created an engaging, easy-to-use online store as part of the new website,” says Deborah. “We streamlined the way products were organised, so that it is now easy for shoppers to see the company’s everyday tableware collections as well as stand-alone gift pieces.

We created an inspirational gallery, and integrated the heritage Dartington brand, which already has a very loyal following. We’ve also spotlighted local artists, helping to generate interest and increase visits. The online store has been a great success, and we’ve seen sales rise by 11% already”.

From Julie Stevens’ point of view, bringing in a dedicated agency has been a successful business decision.