Thinking of moving to Devon and setting up a POTTERY CAFE - anyone know about this kind of thing ?

[scatterbrain]

Well - started off with being a beauty salon but during the day has morphed into being a pottery cafe !

Short version - am loking for lifestyle change - fed up with rat race - have seen house in Devon village with ground floor business premises which would seem ideal for a pottery cafe business. I might also do educational toys as a sideline !

So - just wondering if anyone here has a pottery cafe and could give me any advice ?

Thanks In Advance !

that would be a no?!

A lot of devon is poor, but there are some affluent areas. (Dh comes from Somerset Devon border, we do the carnivals down there still- I'm from somerset).

Can I suggesting trying to CAt jayzmummy if she is cat'able? She has an arts and craft business in devon, though not the same sort.

We moved to Devon last year, from Manchester to a village just outside Exeter. There's several of us on Mumsnet who have moved here recently for the lifestyle. It's a lovely place to live.

But.... Devon is swarming with people who move here to set up potteries and cafes, so much so that a friend of mine who works in a business school has a regular case study on his course about "Frank who moves to Devon to set up a pottery". You'd have to make sure there would be enough business for another one.

Devon is not THAT poor, the area round here is quite affluent, the more remote rural areas are poor, but it has lots of well off people (people who work remotely, or have retired here) as well as tourists.

Which village are you thinking about?

further point to consider

are you prepared to put up with the flack for setting up a frilly business which you don't need to make any money from while also being a horrible hawhaw London incomer who skates over the surface of local interests and doesn't contribute to the local community as you don't use local schools and your dh makes his pots of money elsewhere.

Oh right lemonice - no judgements there then eh ?

I am really fed up with this thread now - too many people with axes to grind !

If you haven't got anything helpful to say say nothing !

FYI I am absolutely not a Londoner, we don't live in London and.....oh whatever ....can't be arsed to explain really.

It's not an axe to grind, it is a fact that the country is heaving with people who are "downsizing" and opening businesses opf a lifestyle nature

30 years ago it was the dream to open a country pub at 50 now it is a lifestyle business usually arising from having kids and wanting a new life in a nice part of the country

Go to Top Drawer or Pulse or the Spring Fair and you will see droves of these enterprises both as exhibitors and buyers

Finding a successful potential niche is very hard and you need a thick skin to make it and a rock solid desire to work really hard

There are quite a few pottery-cafes in Devon and Somerset. Most (that are long-running) seem to be run by "artists" who use the quiet time to do their own work, which is their real passion. I am local to one which is run by two "retired" artists who just seem to enjoy painting all day in the quiet shop and occasionally entertaining children.

Bear in mind the cost of a proper kiln (5-10k? just guessing) and learning to use it. My ex-husband and partner both have a kiln for private use, and both are obsessed by the chemical experiments required for glazing - I don't know whether you can get away with minimal knowledge here, or they are just pottery geeks! My SIL also has a (glass) kiln and her main gripe is the amount it costs to run for each firing - although she uses economy seven and runs it at night.

A pottery shop has just opened and closed in Yeovil.

HTH

I think pointing out potential problems should be considered helpful to be honest. I t can save a lot of money.

My main concern would be pottery in a village- is there a big enough base. In your situation if you only needed to make 7 grand I'd be loking at renting the space out- holiday let perhaps- depending on how much work needed doing, and whether you have parking etc.

Or I'd use it as a storage area and start playing around on ebay to see what sells (although bear in mind ebay businesses take up lots of time).

The wealth thing- a lot of farmers/rural types are land rich, drive big cars they can get through the company but have little disposable income. Something to bear in mind. East Devon is better off than a lot of the rest of Devon, but you'll be competing with whatever's available in Exeter/Taunton. Worth researching the income of the actual area you're in.

Scatterbrain, the points some people are making are valid it seems to me and really worth considering imo. A LOT of Devon is poor, even seemingly affluent areas. Plenty of people move down from London or other cities, buy with no mortgage and then live on savings + low local salary or commute some of the time to make enough to live but they don't necessarily all have high disposable incomes. And many, many people move out again, as we did, finding the combination of low salaries/high housing costs/distance from a city/provincial attitudes/monoculture too much. Those things won't bother everyone but they are worth considering.

I have some sympathy with the second homers pricing locals out of the housing market argument too, I do understand why it would be frustrating if you were local and couldn't ever afford to buy as a result. £250k for a bog standard 3 bed is sod all on a London salary, to a local on £12k it's completely impossible. I'm not saying it's your responsibility, just that I can understand why people get het up about incomers opening businesses which don't really have to survive or turn a profit.

And I think some valid points here about considering what you want and whether opening a business is the way to get it. It may be, as others have said, that you can achieve the same end result another way.

But there?s no need to take it personally. Just because people point out the pitfalls of starting your own business doesn?t mean they have an axe to grind. Surely you would rather people were honest than that they said ?yeh, great idea, sell your house in wherever it is you live, buy a house in devon that has a shop attached, open up a pottery café and your life will be instantly transformed into a relaxing existence where you get to spend more time with your family?. It?s better to go into these things with your eyes open, because the more you are prepared for how hard it is going to be (and it will be hard, that?s a certainty), the more thought you can put into what it is you want to do and how you are going to do it.

Of course moving to devon is the dream, but if you go chasing after something like this which you know nothing about and which you haven?t really thought through it could turn into a nightmare.

The problem is that almost everyone has made huge assumptions - that I want an easy life for one ! I didn't say that - I said I wanted a better life - I said I wanted out of the rat-race, I want to stop driving up and down the M3, I want to do something that means something to me !

It's quite clear though from this thread that Devon would not be welcoming - so we will not be going there to live anytime soon.

Maybe if I came on here and said I want to move to Devon and live on benefits the response would have been different ? Maybe the locals wouldn't find that so offensive ?

Gosh, I don't think anyone's having a go at you. And I absolutely don't think the reaction would have been ok had you said you wanted to live on benefits, what gave you that idea? I'm not a Devon local btw, not remotely. But I did move from London to Devon and lived there for 3 years and my dh was born there so is a local.

as an aside I don't live anywhere near devon or even in a rural location

I do know what it's like running a business however and it ain't the way to go if you want less hours and more richness in your life

Calm down, scatterbrain!

Either you want to move to be nearer your dh's family or you don't - but you've just indicated that the views of a few MNers is enough to dissuade you from what you said was what your whole family wanted.

Don't blame us if we think your plans seem a bit half-baked.

The outsider buying worry is valid, there's no way we could ever buy here, let alne at home. Yet Dh has a higher than average salary, its just the number of retired folk moving down / etc that takes up the market (particularly thinking about South Somerset where Dh would love to return, Ilminster / Chard / South Petherton way).

there are ways of overcoming that, such as contributing to the community- even if the kidsa ren't at school there, you can still offer cut prices to local school kids, or offer to go in and do workshops occasionally (that's what happens here).

I'm sorry that you have taken all the rock solid, genuine business advice given here as personal critisism. I don't know you from Adam but I felt that I had to give you some reality checks from the frontline of running one of several of our very sucessful businesses actually, you know, in shops in Devon.

Anyway, I am almost certain that you asked for advice and as I have ample tested knowledge of the market and opportunities doen here, I hope that I have persuaded you to at least compile a business plan to present to a banker. That way you will at least see that it isn't just us saying 'think again'.

I do wish you luck and hope that you find the lifestyle that you want.

Just back from a family christmas in Devon and skimmed this thread.

Wonder if you are thinking of Modbury? Probably not, just a thought. Anyway, do bear in mind that some of the area's large leisure attractions, like 'Woodlands' near Dartmouth, have pottery cafes on site. These enterprises of course, offer a lot of family orientated activites in one place.This might appeal more to your target market and take a lot of potential business away from you - do check what local attractions offer.

Also, even if there is no pottery cafe now, bigger leisure attractions with spare space could open one at any time. (And if these attractions don't offer a pottery cafe, why is that? Have they tried and found demand was not high? can you do some research?)

A typical family of several children might only have one who wants to go to a pottery cafe, so the family will be more inclined to go where they can amuse the other siblings as well - ie a leisure attraction. And IME by no means all children like pottery cafes to begin with.

I can tell you what I miss in Devon - the closure of Sorely Tunnel children's farm with its indoor playbarns, just near Kingsbridge. It has now reverted back to a working farm I gather, so probably much better for the community. However, there could now be a gap in the market for an indoor play space in the area, as it attracts lots of tourists.

didn't know that the animal farm pace ahd closed tigermoth, there's a fab one in Brean if you're ever over that way (near Weston, so exellent to combine with a trip to Clarks Village or Galstomnbury imo)

That's a shame, I liked Sorley Tunnel, ds had his sixth birthday party there.

Thanks for the tip about Brean

Hi www! I so needed the Sorley Tunnel escape route at times this christmas. It was sadly missed. Certain adult members of the family seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to assume my active 7 year old ds2 will happily sit still, be on best behavour, not raise his voice, roll arounnd on the carpet or touch things for a 7 or more hour stretch of time indoors during the day having had no runaround exercise outdoors beforehand.

A bit late on this one but I've only just found this thread.

Until recently I worked for one of the largest UK suppliers to the PYOP (paint your own pottery) industry.

I now run my own mobile PYOP business but am happy to offer advice and / or put you in touch with a number of organisations that offer start up training in this area.

There are plenty of poeple out there running very succsssful PYOP studios and cafes but there are also plenty of common pit falls that you need to be aware of.

Katy [email protected]