The new Small Pottery Wheel monthly update: January

Hi everybody!
Welcome to the January 2025 update from Small Ceramics! This one is coming to you a little late as we’ve had a few unexpected events that delayed me in writing this post.

Life Stuff

The first unexpected event was that Stefano had to undergo surgery on his leg and has been in the hospital. The procedure turned out to be more significant than we initially thought, leaving him unable to walk or do many things on his own at the moment. So, on top of my own job and running Small Ceramics, I’ve been taking care of him and helping him around the house.

To add to the chaos, he was also selected for jury duty, which starts next week! You know what they say… Man makes a plan and God laughs!

Fortunately, he should be more mobile very soon and back in full swing with all things Small Ceramics.

Advance for Growth Award

If you read last month’s blog post, you know that we won an award from JC Decor for advertising across digital billboards in our borough of Hounslow, West London!

Since then, it's been a whirlwind of activity—our Christmas was spent planning our first creative campaign, and we spent the first part of January executing and delivering it. Just the other day, we went out and saw our campaign live on the screens, which felt like an incredible achievement!

I’ve shared a few photos on Instagram and will be posting more videos soon, showing our creative work across the borough. If you see our campaign in real life, please let me know!

Throughout 2025, we’ll be launching more campaigns, and hopefully, future ones will feature our new wheel!

The New Wheel

Currently sitting in our office are the motor and battery pack for our new model!

You might be wondering: Why not just use the ones we chose for the prototype we received in July? Well, part of the reason we halted progress on that model was that we felt the battery and motor weren’t up to scratch. They had certain elements that didn’t fully meet our needs.

Since then, we’ve been working with some amazing engineers and product designers in America who helped us find these better motors and batteries. They’ll also assist in finalizing the new design.

Of course, all of this requires funding, which has been a significant challenge for us. However, now that our business has turned three (at the end of January—Happy Birthday to us! 🎉), we’re eligible for many more loans and funding. That means moving forward will be much easier since we’ll have the financial support needed to produce these wheels at scale.

In the meantime, we’re still producing our current model. As I’ve mentioned before, if you don’t want to wait for the new model, you can use your pre-order deposit to purchase one of our current ones. Simply enter your 16-digit code into the box at checkout marked "Gift Card" and the deposit will be deducted from the price of your Wheel!

Europe

Much to the frustration of our customers—and many small businesses in the UK and US—the EU has introduced new legislation covering the safe use and accountability of nearly all products entering any European Union country.

As a consumer, I’m actually happy to see these regulations updated, as they now better reflect modern times and the evolution of e-commerce. However, as a small business, it does create additional hurdles.

To continue trading in the EU, we now need a representative based within an EU country and must update all our manuals to include every language of the countries we wish to sell in. As you can imagine, this has taken time and money, but we’re nearly there! Our booklet is almost complete, and stock is piled up in our office, ready to go. As soon as our products land in Europe, we’ll let you all know!

That’s it for this month’s update! It’s been a busy start to the year, but despite the challenges, we’re making big strides—from launching our billboard campaign to pushing forward with the new wheel and gearing up for EU sales.

As always, thank you for your continued support—it truly means the world to us. If you have any questions, comments, or just want to say hi, feel free to reach out on Instagram or drop us a message.

Until next time, happy potting!

Daisy & Stefano ❤️