We are two best friends Indre and Rasa who decided to create a pottery studio under Mr. Bowl Ceramics brand. Mostly we make custom tableware and interior items. Our studio is located in a small and very beautiful country Lithuania.
The idea came very naturally – we both had an interest in putting our hands in the clay for many years. It was an escape from our busy daily work and routine. One day we thought about how wonderful it would be to turn our hobby into a full time job. After a while, Mr. Bowl Ceramics was born. We left the work and started to build and grow our own brand. It wasn’t easy, as it may seem at first glance, but all the challenges we faced were exciting because we were doing what we really enjoy.
When we decided to open our own studio, we discussed what we would do. We both wanted to make plates for ourselves, our friends also asked if we could make plates for them too, so we thought, how hard can it be to make a dinner plate? Not at all. And at first it seemed that making plates was really easy before we started having various problems.
We had so many cracks and so many plates broke, that we spent months of trying to figure out where we were making a mistake. We met with a professor from the university to talk about our production process and ask for help finding a problem. The first question she asked us was why we decided to start our pottery career from plates, because in ceramics this is technologically one of the heavier products. I think you can image how surprised we were. But it does not stop us, nor does it repel us. On the contrary, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. Our goal was to understand and master this technology. And after a while we managed to reveal all the secrets of plates.
It may sound funny, but the most difficult thing for us was to come up with a brand name. Everything else just happened itself. Our previous works helped us to gain so many valuable experience, that we just followed our gut feeling. Rasa had many experience with logistics, so we instantly decided to sell our ceramics worldwide. There is nothing that Rasa cannot deliver to any point in the world. Indre was a marketing and communication manager, so she took care of brand image and website. But the most important thing was, that most of the time we spent in our studio, mastering our tableware production. And when we got our first orders and kind and generous reviews from the customers, we knew that we did it. It’s already 6 years we are selling our ceramics on Etsy and website, and we still make everything ourselves. We decided to keep our studio small, where handmade pottery is born, when we can talk to our customers ourselves, and share our passion and love with people who value this.
From our experience we could say that the most important thing is high quality product and passion for the work. 5 star reviews speaks themselves. We love our work, everyday we do make things that bring people happiness. We truly care about every our customer, we want each of them feel important, we want to share with them our passion. We follow our hearts, keep our production standards high and believe that people who care about similar things will find us.
Of course we do make additional actions to help them find us: we invest in beautiful pictures, comprehensive descriptions, SEO, google ads, social communication, etc.
There is a war going on near us at the moment. After the terrorist attacked an independent and free Ukraine, a lot of anxiety and concern came into our lives. We try to help the Ukrainian brothers and sisters as much as we can, every month we donate 10% of our revenue, so I would say we do not make plans for the future. Our goal is to earn more so we could donate more. The more people support Ukraine, the faster this horrible war will get over.
We feel grateful we are safe, we can work, we get orders from all over the world, we cherish this and do our best to keep our minds positive.
Just do it. We do not have luxury to waste our lives, we live only once. There will be hard days, will be happy days, but the most important thing is to move forward, even smallest steps counts. If you came up with a idea, you will manage to find a way to implement it as well, step by step.
People find us on mrbowlceramics.com, Etsy, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest
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