Insider Media Limited

Next month’s royal wedding will be “a great commercial opportunity” for Stoke-based pottery entrepreneur Emma Bridgewater. Speaking exclusively to Insider, Bridgewater, whose company bears her name, said that it was an exciting task to create a line of items for the event on 29 April. She also spoke about the collapse of big name brand Spode, describing it as “a wake up call that we might be in the danger zone”.

Despite the demise of Spode and other potters in the region, Emma Bridgewater has found its niche market and has grown organically over the past 25 years. The company is now aiming to double its turnover to £20m.

The potter, who owns the company alongside her husband Matthew, said that the brand was “fiercely loyal” to its hometown of Stoke.

“By staying in Stoke, it’s definitely helped to keep the company focused,” she said. “We’ve really benefited from the heritage and traditions of pottery that the region embodies.”

Bridgewater said that the company had grown “entirely organically” over the past two decades.

“We were concentrating on the growth and nurturing of the business for the first few years,” said Bridgewater. “As we grew, we introduced a factory shop, as we didn’t have one to start with. Then, when we’d get visitors travelling to see us, we wanted to offer food and drink, and so the tourism side of the business really grew from there.”

The company, which employs about 180 people at its site, also offers tours around its factory each week.

Speaking about the event which will inevitably be one of the company’s most lucrative this year - the royal wedding - Bridgewater described it as “a great commercial opportunity”.

She added: “I love the connection between the ceramics industry and the royal family. Whenever there’s an occasion, it’s wonderful that people want to commemorate it with a piece of pottery or china that they can keep forever.

“And while it will be a great commercial opportunity, we don’t just sit around and wait for these events – they’re far too rare for that. We have to be creative and innovative with our designs and ideas all year round.”

Emma Bridgewater has already designed a range to commemorate the wedding, which includes a cake stand, plates, mugs and a tea towel design.

Away from pottery, Bridgewater praised the region’s connection to its heritage brands.

“It’s wonderful that names like Aga, Imperical Bathrooms and Jaguar Land Rover and synonymous with the West Midlands. Maybe sometimes, their significance is forgotten, and I think that perhaps another country with such brands would be more aware of their importance.”

The potter also said that during the downturn and amidst the demise of ceramics giant Spode in 2008, she worried that the company could be “in the danger zone”.

“It was a worrying time,” she said. “And in the last couple of years, the pottery industry has definitely shrunk. There have been casualties, but I think that independent, smaller retailers have, overall, come out of the recession in a better position.”

“But I certainly wouldn’t want to see the industry get any smaller.”