It's been a while since we have posted anything for our customers; things have been difficult at the factory the past couple of years, but we believe we have come up with a solution to come back stronger than we have been and still provide quality birdbaths to both our wholesale and retail customers.
American Made Pottery seems to be a dying art (at least in the larger scale operations like ours), and we have taken our fair share of hits over the last several years. We have lost most of our skilled workers, our long time production manager retired, our kiln has needed constant attention and care, and along with other various complications in production its been harder and harder to service as many of our wholesale customers as we have in the past.
This past season we have survived and were able to still produce with just 6 employees. With such a small group we were really able to concentrate on trying to improve quality and consistency in kiln burns and maintaining a working production schedule.
- A single Jiggerman - Our jiggerman has been in pottery for over 20 years learning the skill and techniques it takes to make a quality birdbath or planter. He knows the clay and knows what it takes to get a good piece every time.
- A Carrier for the jiggerman - he works side by side with our jiggerman switching out molds as he fills them and finishing the dried ware along the way.
- A Sprayer - He makes all of our in-house made glazes and sprays every piece that our jiggerman makes. He also helps finish and pull ware from molds.
- Our Palletizer/picker - He has gotten palletizing down to a science and knows how to safely get a large pallet of fragile product to its destination. He also helps both our Wholesale and Retail managers load & unload every kiln burn.
- Wholesale Customer Manager - She handles all incoming wholesale orders, production management and schedules, inventory and warehouse management, shipping and invoicing. She's making sure we can ship as much product around the country as possible.
- Retail Customer Manager - She manages and runs our online site & chat, handling online orders coming in and leaving, retail customers at the factory, any customer service emails/phone calls. She also handles custom product orders and product management both new and old, as well as painting and aging all of our hand painted items with our Wholesale Manager.
Our team might be small for now, but each person cares about the work they are doing and the product that is leaving the building. We want to keep Burley alive to service our community and deliver handmade products to garden centers around the country for years to come.
So what does all of this mean for you as a wholesale or retail customer?
For Wholesale: We have come up with a plan taking in to account our most ordered items, products that burn correctly and consistently on the kiln, and what palletizes well together and we have put together 3 pallet assortments that are available to order. This means that for now, we will no longer be offering planters, make your own pallets, or any orders do not follow our 3 pallet assortments. For this next season we still have planters and some Terra Cotta items left in stock and available to ship, so get them while they last. Wholesale will also be limited to 2 pallets max per order, and we believe we will be able to handle 40 pallets leaving each month so pallet spots will fill up fast for high demand months. We can add more slots as we are able but it all depends on what we can get burned and made in a month. Pallets of Terra Cotta and planters will not count towards the pallet limit.
For Retail: We will continue to offer our new current run of products as we produce them with some styles moving from "ready to ship quickly" to "made to order" with a larger time frame to ship. We want to keep as much variety online for our customers all over the country so everyone can find that perfect birdbath or planter for their needs. We also want to add even more options for customers by adding in some "paint your own" options for birdbaths and planters. Our signature Hand-painted Styles are just that, hand-painted here at the factory using an outdoor acrylic paint, which means, if you wanted to have that perfect shade of Sage or Dusty Blue to match your new front door, house or whatever you wanted, you could get a "Paint Your Own" item like the Simple Elegance Birdbath Set in Buff and paint it to match anything.
We have also seen how much love our Bookplate planters have gotten over the years and the requests for long gone out of stock letters. We found the molds and dug them out of the back, dusted them off and will now start accepting new orders for letters we have been out of stock of for 8 years now. These will be made to order only and will remain "paint your own" to keep production running smoothly.
We hope that this upcoming gardening season will be better than our last and our plans will run smoothly while we produce as much as we can for both wholesale and retail needs. If we start to see that we can handle more wholesale orders, we will up the monthly pallet limit, and even work on more Online Only products.
*Wait list* - If you have signed up for a products wait list before Nov. 1st 2024, there is a discount code set up for you so you are able to get the original price you signed up for. Please contact us via Chat for your specific wait list code.
If you have any questions about products or ordering, please feel free to reach out via email, phone, or chat. Please keep in mind, its just the 6 of us to get everything done from start to finish and shipped out the door, give us a little time to respond and know we out working hard to get your product shipped out.