The one thing this article fails to mention is what I believe was the company's ultimate downfall. The pot works of Wedgwood and Royal Doulton (another pottery company bought by Wedgwood a few years ago) were slowly being closed down and replaced by production in Indonesia to save money. Towards the end, the company was even looking at moving its main HQ to Jakarta. Royal Doulton became just a label - the site of their old headquarters in Burslem lies empty. Thousands of people have lost their jobs in the pottery industry in Stoke-on-Trent (an area KNOWN as The Potteries) over the past ten or fifteen years or so.
What they didn't bank on was the fact that the predominantly foreign (American and Japanese) buyers of the top-end Wedgwood wares didn't want Indonesian-made pottery, they were buying into luxury goods made in England. By cutting costs, they took away their selling point and couldn't differentiate themselves from the mass-produced Chinese stuff you get in a supermarket. There are Far Eastern "Doulton" dinner services selling for a shade over a tenner in big discount shops - and they're absolute junk. They've killed their brands.
This area has centuries of heritage in pottery and thousands of people with the skills to design and produce excellent quality wares. We are, without a doubt, the best place to make pottery in the world. But it's soulless business people with their eyes firmly on the bottom line rather than on trading off that heritage that have killed it off and condemned our city to what feels like a future of minimum wage jobs in nail distribution warehouses and mobile phone call centres. You can make stuff cheaper by outsourcing it to the Far East - but do you really want to compete with everyone else doing that when you could be producing a uniquely British product?
But it's soulless business people with their eyes firmly on the bottom line rather than on trading off that heritage that have killed it off and condemned our city to what feels like a future of minimum wage jobs in nail distribution warehouses and mobile phone call centres.
Oh boy, another rant about how "soulless" business people who worship the almighty dollar have killed off something beautiful and magical in the world because of their greed.
Please. Most manufacturing in the western hemisphere has been offshored because they simply can't compete with overseas firms who have dramatically lower costs. It's for survival, not higher profits.
I suspect that the demand for expensive and "uniquely British" pottery is no longer big enough to support those companies, forcing them to compete in a lower market. If the demand was there, someone would be starting a factory and hiring all those experts in your area to supply that demand. And if you think the demand is there, go raise some cash and do it yourself :-)
They will be writing this article about the New York Times within a decade: how the current leaders lost the winning recipe of the founders and drove it bankrupt.
I'll never forget how much I looked forward to getting the Sunday Times when living in NYC in the early 90's - it was the ultimate paper with objectively reported in depth stories from around the world. Now it leans so heavily I hardly recognize it - the bias started with the current editor - a shame to loose such an incredibly valuable source of news.
The one thing this article fails to mention is what I believe was the company's ultimate downfall. The pot works of Wedgwood and Royal Doulton (another pottery company bought by Wedgwood a few years ago) were slowly being closed down and replaced by production in Indonesia to save money. Towards the end, the company was even looking at moving its main HQ to Jakarta. Royal Doulton became just a label - the site of their old headquarters in Burslem lies empty. Thousands of people have lost their jobs in the pottery industry in Stoke-on-Trent (an area KNOWN as The Potteries) over the past ten or fifteen years or so.
What they didn't bank on was the fact that the predominantly foreign (American and Japanese) buyers of the top-end Wedgwood wares didn't want Indonesian-made pottery, they were buying into luxury goods made in England. By cutting costs, they took away their selling point and couldn't differentiate themselves from the mass-produced Chinese stuff you get in a supermarket. There are Far Eastern "Doulton" dinner services selling for a shade over a tenner in big discount shops - and they're absolute junk. They've killed their brands.
This area has centuries of heritage in pottery and thousands of people with the skills to design and produce excellent quality wares. We are, without a doubt, the best place to make pottery in the world. But it's soulless business people with their eyes firmly on the bottom line rather than on trading off that heritage that have killed it off and condemned our city to what feels like a future of minimum wage jobs in nail distribution warehouses and mobile phone call centres. You can make stuff cheaper by outsourcing it to the Far East - but do you really want to compete with everyone else doing that when you could be producing a uniquely British product?