Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Ogden
Hi Sarah, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I fell in love with clay the moment it touched my hands, haha. I loved to see the joy my handmade creations brought friends and family, and people kept telling me “you could totally sell this”, that kind of support and feedback was super inspiring. This inspiration led to the formation of SMO (an acronym for Sarah Michelle Ogden) in 2017.
I began SMO in my small apartment in San Francisco’s Lower Haight. During the first few years I worked on getting SMO out into the world by being active on social media (Pinterest to this day drives a lot of views and sales for me!), setting up my own website, going around to the shops I loved in the city and asking if they would carry my work and participating in craft fairs! Going out and selling in person is a great way to get noticed. One of my favorite projects, making custom pieces for an Andy Warhol shop at SFMoMa when his exhibit came through, was from a buyer seeing my work at an event! That led to another opportunity with the Getty Museum and so on!
Four years later, in 2021, I no longer felt like my kitchen was big enough so I moved SMO into my first official studio! With this bigger space, SMO was able to grow into its next phase: bigger workspace, bigger kiln, more capacity for clients/orders, WAY WAY more ceramics, and new products, too.
2021 also happened to be the same year my long-time dream to participate in West Coast Craft became a reality. I love craft fairs, they allow me to do what I love most – being out in the community, meeting new people, and seeing everyone’s reactions to SMO in-person! Working alone in a studio can be a bit isolating so getting out into the world, getting real time feedback is so valuable.
I also had a dream of hosting Art Marts in my space. I thought it was important to have a cheap space to share with other small makers/artists and give the community opportunity to find out about cool, local people and to have a place in the neighborhood to shop local and small. Thus, SMO + Friends Art Mart was born and our first event was in December 2022.
Now in 2024, SMO is on the precipice of another BIG change. My family and I have found ourselves saying goodbye to San Francisco after 18 years, and in March we moved down to Long Beach!
I’ve taken this transitional time to take a step back from creating ceramics, I wanted to have some time before committing to overhead costs of a new studio to do things that generally fall to the way side when you just feel the pressure to go, go, go! I am redesigning my website, getting professional photos taken of my products and am having the free time to design and work on fun new non-ceramic things that I think my customer will love.
Having products for sale that you hand make all on your own is tough, especially when you move BIG order quantities like wholesaling (that is a huge piece of my business). I am hoping to be able to have some products that I’ve designed but that are not manufactured by me available to help alleviate the pressure to be a “factory” of one and to help prevent burnout, which is very common in the maker world! I love drawing and have had so much fun turning my drawings into things for people to take home. My drawings are inspired by my ceramics and my surroundings. So far I’ve made some hats and stickers, they have been a big success. During this “break”, I’ve been working on expanding to a few other products and I can’t wait to show everyone.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has definitely not been a smooth road throughout this journey. For one, my “studio” in my apartment (my kitchen!!) was not big enough and not safe! Ceramics make toxic byproducts and I do not recommend doing it in a place where you prepare and eat food. I also only had a tiny test kiln for many years, I out grew this kiln very fast. Luckily a friend of mind let me rent her kiln but that added transportation cost/issues.
In 2020, when the pandemic officially started and shelter in place was ordered, everyones lives changed. For me, my partner who had been going into work everyday now was at home 24/7. We started to cook every meal at home and it just didn’t make sense to make ceramics in this high trafficked area. I also felt like I didn’t have any creative energy and didn’t really want to work. Eventually I started to ignore made to order orders and stopped working all together. I had a choice to make, did I want to continue SMO or did I want to do something else? At this time, everyday I would walk the same path in the morning. While I was contemplating the future of my business, I cam across a sign in a space two blocks from my apartment “For Lease”. Finally I saw the space, it was amazing and the price for SF was not too bad but it meant taking on overhead cost and 100% committing myself to SMO. Eventually I decided, YES, this is what I want to do so I hit the ground running! I emailed the people who were waiting for orders, got into West Coast Craft in November 2021 and started to make the most ceramics I had ever made and hadn’t really stopped working until this unexpected move.
In 2023, my partner was laid off. This was a big financial blow for us, SMO might be my passion but it doesn’t always pay the bills! He was unemployed for 10 months, during this time he helped me tremendously and I produced the most ceramics I ever had but it wasn’t enough to supplement what he was contributing financial before. Finally an opportunity came along but he would need to be in office 4 days a week, in Irvine CA. This was a big decision to make, we never really thought we would ever leave San Francisco. I felt like SMO was just hitting a grove, I was meeting new contacts and makers everyday and it had been our home for 18 years. It seemed we didn’t really have any other choice, it was a good opportunity and it was a chance to be financially stable again.
As I said before, I took some time off after the move. I wanted to set up our new living space, figure out life in our new city and work on some backend SMO projects. Now I am ready to look for a new space for my studio and I did not think that Long Beach would be MORE expensive than SF and that there wouldn’t be that many spaces that could work for my needs! That was a big shock, I’m hoping that the right space will come along just like my Oak Street studio, fingers crossed!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a one-woman ceramics business! I mostly make colorful, hand built, functional pieces. I am inspired by the things around me, FOOD, animals, kitschy weird things, haha, anything that will put a smile on someones face and brighten their space and their day.
My most well known products are my trinket dishes and coasters! Specifically, I’ve made thousands of my Strawberry Dish and Mixed Citrus Coaster Sets. I also make ceramic pins and magnets and design hats and stickers! I love the idea of turning something I made from clay into a drawing and then taking that and turning into a functional item. For example my best selling hat, the Happy Egg Face Hat, was inspired by a photo I took, arranging two egg dishes and a banana dish into a smily face. I also take inspiration from my surroundings, thats why it’s important to me to have a fun, bright, colorful studio space, I get inspired by the crazy whacky tchotchkes I’ve collected and everyday life!
I’m most proud of the relationships I’ve cultivated while doing this and the opportunities that those relationships lead to. Having my work at the SFMoMa was a HUGE milestone for me, it was such an amazing feeling to walk through the exhibit and then find my name and my work in the shop at the end. that lead to an opportunity to design some products for the Getty shop and so on. I love when people see me at craft fairs and say “hey I saw this banana dish at the MoMa!”.
I think what really sets me apart is my attention to detail. The bright colors of my work are not easy to do. You need to paint every color, the clay is white, and each color needs to be applied with multiple even coats. Bright color that pops is important to me and I find it more esthetically pleasing to paint and put details on the backs of each piece. It also gives off a more finished look. It adds a lot of time and patiences that I think most people would skip.
What’s next?
I think I’ve already touched on this a bit. BIG 2024 changes have happened; move, new website in progress, new photos taken and designing new non-ceramic products for SMO.
During this transitional period, I’ve been able to step back and think about what I want to do in the future and what I want SMO to look and feel like. My goal for this year is to drive more sales directly to my website and to limit the amount of ceramics available for wholesale (selling goods in large quantities and at half the price, usually to shopkeepers who then sell them to the public). This is why I am working on a new website, watch out smoceramics.com 2.0! I have good traffic on my site but the conversion rate is not where I want it to be. I want people to feel like they do in person, I want my site to have the same impact my “shop” makes at craft fairs. I’m working on recreating that feeling with bright primary colors, animations, unexpected design, easy to shop features, fun uniform photos and Im trying to add very little pops! That’s something that bothers me a lot when I am online shopping, so things are going to be simple and clean! I keep calling this new version, the grown-up SMO website!
Wholesaling is a great way for a small business to reach the masses in person, and all over the world! But it’s also a lot of work when you hand make each item, especially when the payoff is cut in half. I’ve worked with some great shop owners and have made important connections. I’ve also sold to stores that complained about the prices, and the time it took to make their order and then never heard from them again. I want to work with shops that I have the same values and that appreciate and understand hand made goods. I’ve come up with an idea to make my ceramics more exclusive, I want to partners with my favorite shops and have them be the SMO hub in that city. I think this can very beneficial not only for me but also for the shops I partner with. In today’s commercial market, you can throw a rock and hit at least 5 boutique shops, all carrying the same goods (globalization, am I right?!). I think this idea of exclusivity will give these shops an edge, a reason for someone to seek them out, and it makes our relationship, our story more meaningful. I’m even working on exclusive designs and ceramics to be sold at some of those shops, Like my new Olive Face Hat. It’s a collaboration, an exclusive hat only sold by myself and my favorite shop in Portland, Seven Sisters.
It’s a little bit scary to say no to business you know you have but I’ve decided what I want SMO to look like in the future and am hoping eventually my decisions will pay off.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://smoceramics.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/smoceramics
