It was 30th January, 2022 - 10am on a Sunday if we’re going for specifics (I like specifics).
I’d just decided I was going to try to make some miniature plants out of paper after making some in a model kit and thinking “I can make some better than that”. (how presumptuous!)
I ordered:
- 10 Terracotta pots - £8.70 - eBay
- Pea shingle (2kg) - £6.99 - eBay
- Glue gun - £13.99 - Amazon
- Floral arrangement kit - £11.39 - Amazon
- Jewellery pliers - £5.59 - Amazon
- Procreate software - £8.99 - Apple App Store
Little did I know that this ‘bright idea’ amounting to 6 things costing £55.65 would grow to become a total monster (in a good way!)
This isn’t the story about how I started the business, although I should get on and write about that. But this… is where the pot saga started.
I found those pots by just searching for ‘miniature pots’ on Google, Amazon and eBay. I didn’t really know what size I was looking for, I just knew they needed to be really dinky. The ones I found on eBay were 25mm tall by 25mm wide at the top - I got my ruler out to visualise what they’d be like, seemed ok, in the basket then thank you please.
When they arrived they were perfect - so cute, I was in love with them!
Within a week I’d designed and made my first plant, and posted it on the gram for all the internet world to see. I’d decided I wanted to make a business out of it and handcraft them to sell.
Above: my first plant in it’s cute little pot
So I needed more pots. Here it starts.
87p per pot was not going to be viable, I knew I needed to keep my costs low because this was all a bit of a punt so I was on the hunt for some sort of bulk buy that would be a better price but not going to have me swimming in pots without any kind of proven idea in terms of a customer actually buying something.
Cue MUCH Googling. Honestly so much Googling. I found only one option - I’d managed to find the person who was selling them on eBay and track down their companies main website. We’ll call him Terracotta Dude.
I looked on Terracotta Dude’s website and they were available in batches of 120. There were 5 packs showing on the website as available.
Knowing that I couldn’t find any anywhere else, I panicked and ordered all 600 in case I couldn’t get any more. I thought it would give me time to search again for another supplier as a backup and just something I wouldn’t need to worry about for a while. Worst case if everything went pear-shaped, I’d try and sell them on eBay.
They cost just over £250 working out at about 50p per pot - nearly half of what I’d paid for those first 10 on eBay - good stuff.
Turns out that was a lot of pots though.
Above: just a few of my first ‘bulk’ order
I didn’t order any more (another 360) until December 2023! As you can probably tell, the first 2 years were hard going in the very niche paper plant game!
In those near on 2 years I had spent MANY hours on and off searching for other suppliers. Not because there was a problem with what I had, but I knew having only one supplier was a risk. I came up with nothing - every single time. I thought maybe I could try and track down where they came from (naive) - Terracotta Dude had told me in our convo his supplier was in China. So I googled all the search terms….
“miniature plant pots china”
“manufacturers in china”
‘terracotta manufacturers china”
“finding a chinese manufacturer”
“how to find a manufacturer in china”
“manufacturers in china english website”
The searches went on, I tried all sorts. I remember one website that had an English speaking audio over the whole website navigating you around the site, it was very loud and there was no button to turn it down or stop it! Remember this was pre-ChatGPT and I just hadn’t done any of this before so just really didn’t have a clue what I was doing.
So anyway, I ordered those 360 from Terracotta Dude in December 2023 as I was getting near to the end of my stockpile of the original 600.
Now, short interlude / plot twist - it was around this time that just for fun I made a miniature Christmas Tree out of Monstera leaves after seeing an AI image on Instagram. Everyone loved it and wanted their own, but I couldn’t charge what it would cost in time to make. I wondered if I could create a make your own version for next year - no wait, could I actually create a make your own paper plant kit too?
All of that is a story for another time but the upshot is I had decided to trial (then if successful, launch) a make your own version of my paper plants and turn it into a monthly subscription box - a new plant to craft each month. Again, launch story another day but it went really well.
However - I knew I’d need LOTS of pots.
I thought if I could at least get my hands on enough for 12 months, and could grow to perhaps 30 - 50 subscribers over the first few months, I’d have time (again) to really properly search for another pot supplier, try and find a professional to help me. So I guessed I needed at least 600, but maybe 300 on top to be safe as a couple had broken in the post during the trial.
So once my trial was underway in January 2024 I wrote to Terracotta Dude and asked how many he had and what might the timescales be if I bought everything he had for him to source more. He said he had about 5000 so I thought “oh that’s ok, no immediate panic then”.
I asked if I could get a better price if I ordered in bulk. He explained there was no negotiation on the price, I even chanced my arm at free delivery but he wasn’t having any of it!
There was a p.s. at the bottom of the email though… “PS, I am trying to line up a new manufacturer of these so hopefully they may drop in price.…”
Ooooooooh! That would be good! - After reading this I felt quite reassured about not having a backup plan for a while.
Not complacent though - I knew it was still a risk.
I decided to go for 1200 pots which was £586 - quite the outlay of cash really when you think about everything else I had to buy at the time, boxes, tissue paper, craft supplies, label printer, heaps of computer software, printer ink, all sorts. It made up over 25% of the £2000 ish spend that it cost me to actually get ready for launch of my subscription boxes.
The 1200 pots came in batches over the next few months, as there was some issues with quality which I had found too so Terracotta Dude had to put them through a machine to grind the edges before sending them to me which took time.
Of all the original ones I’d had (nearly 1,000) I had a growing pile of ones I couldn’t use - around 10 - 15% of each batch which was quite a lot. Most were due to chips in the pot around the rim, some had like a crumbly type of look on the base, and some just looked messy. They’re so small that any fault in them is greatly magnified because of the size so I kind of had to accept it comes with the territory a bit.
Above: one of the many pics on my phone of my piles of reject pots
A week after the order I heard from Terracotta Dude that he’d found a new manufacturer in Tunisia to make them. Cue me taking straight to Google….
“miniature plant pots tunisia”
“terracotta manufacturers in tunisia”
“how to find a terracotta manufacturer in tunisia”
You know the drill. Within one hour of trawling I knew that was going to be nothing but a headache with no useful leads.
Fast forward to May and I had more subscribers that I’d planned, I was up to about 150.
I’d also decided to include 2 pots in everyone’s first box, so that if one ever broke in transit in a future box they’d always have a spare so they wouldn’t have to wait to craft their plant (we love Royal Mail but parcels get chucked around like tennis balls and even though they’re wrapped in padding, they’re still so delicate). This was so risky because of the “what if I can’t get more pots” problem but for me a service problem was bigger, I had to make sure people didn’t ever have an issue with broken pots. So for every customer I gained I needed double the pots for the first box, plus accounting for the ones that weren’t good enough I knew I needed lots more (again).
I checked in with Terracotta Dude to see how many he had left and what was the news on the Tunisian supplier? He said he had 3000 left and had instructed the supplier to start getting things ready.
Mid June I checked Terracotta Dude’s website and there was only 240 available. I sent him and email but he was on holiday until the 26th of the month so orders were not being fulfilled and the out of office was on. He did reply but said he didn’t know how many he could give me and would check when he was back from holiday.
Come the end of June I was getting really twitchy, I had so few left I was starting to worry I’d have to stop selling. I was growing my dream business and I’d have to stop selling - what a disaster. I emailed to say that I hoped he’d had a good break and that I was really low and needed to get an order in.
I then had a brainwave - what I thought was a BRILLIANT brainwave! What about 3D printing?
If you don’t know what 3D printing is, it’s a process where a digital model is turned into a physical object by laying down successive layers of material. It’s really cool.
I started googling about 3D printing, what it was, how it works, did they do material that looked like terracotta (which I now know to be called filament) and all that type of stuff. I had a good 24 hours of being swept up in YouTube videos and thinking I would buy and setup my own 3D printing studio at home! What a fool!
After a strong word with myself that I didn’t need to become a 3D printing business, I just needed to use a 3D printing business I came across a company based in London that I really liked the look of. So I sent my enquiry in and they got back to me with all sorts of positive sounding words.
I liked this idea so much for a few reasons...
- When I was researching, I found out that the material they use is Polylactic acid (PLA) - it’s a biodegradable plastic made from renewable plant-based materials like corn and sugarcane. The fact it was plant-based and I was making plants felt good.
- I’d be putting my money into the UK economy and another small business.
- I could have the pots designed without the drill hole in the bottom, saving people the need to seal it up when they’re making their plant.
- I could basically print on demand - NO MORE POT ISSUES!
3D Dude said it was certainly something he could look at replicating and then producing for me, the specific filament that I’d mentioned (a really nice looking terracotta like one) he would look up, and should be doable. And he’d get me some samples made up.
He explained they work on a retainer basis, like a day rate. So basically you pay some money up front and they see how far they can get. They have to do the digital 3D design work to replicate the existing object, source materials to test, printed prototypes as required in various print settings and sizes etc.. until they get to a fit. I’d have to pay £150 upfront and then more as things progress.
It’s worth pointing out that as this stage (and now) my business does not make enough money to pay me - I’ve not taken a penny from it yet. So I don’t have any spare pennies to use on fantasising about shiny new things - but this was not optional, I had to find a solution, so I paid the money and crossed everything. Now to wait to see what they could come up with.
Back to Terracotta Dude. It had been nearly 2 weeks, we were into mid-July and I’d not hear anything so emailed again, he said that he was still working his way through the stack of orders he had and wouldn’t be in a position to start work on mine for another 10 days at least. He said if I was really short he had 50.
50?!
I scratched my head stressing for a week (it was also my birthday week and I was hosting a work experience student so I was super busy) and decided to just order the 240 that were on the website - something was better than nothing.
By this time I was willing to take whatever I could get to be honest, the whole thing was becoming so stressful. I had enough pots maybe for the month I was in and a month and a half more, and I really didn’t want to stop selling, I wanted to grow.
But that wasn’t going to last long so a couple of weeks later at the beginning of August I rang Terracotta Dude. I was desparate by this time and thought that if I could explain my situation over the phone he might take pity and help me out.
We had a good chat and he agreed to supply me with 1920 pots, to be delivered over 4 months, 480 per month.
We also exchanged numbers and became WhatsApp buddies. Excellent - direct access to Terracotta Dude!
And breathe.
Right, I’m out of the immediate shit but more shit is coming. This time I HAVE to find a backup plan because after that there are no more pots and I’m relying on Terracotta Dude and Tunisia folks to come good on the new supply. Wing and a prayer situation.
Above: pic from Terracotta Dude 02/08/24 with the message “ hi, just got this photo from Tunis, pots seem ok, thank god....”
Oh… back up a minute. I forgot to mention that on his email with the invoice he wrote “Have you thought about doing slightly larger plants so we can use up the 36mm stock I have here?”
Now.
This is a reasonable question from Terracotta Dude, however…
By this time I’ve been sending 25mm pots to everyone for 8 months. People were building collections and consistency and quality is important for me. I couldn’t just drop an email out and tell everyone, “your pots are going to be loads bigger now, hope that’s ok”. They’d look right out of sorts and the scale of the plants would have to be altered - as well as the packaging and everything else that goes with it. It just wasn’t an option.
I really wish it had been, and as is always the way I wish I’d have known at the beginning that 25mm pots were like ABSOLUTE GOLD DUST and supply chains are impossible to infiltrate for an amateur like me. I would have thought far more carefully about my pot size and made a plan. But I didn’t, so here I am writing this novel.
The likes of Temu and other dirt cheap websites had been popping up and I of course was able to find pots there, but NEVER the right size. And to be honest, I didn’t want to purchase items in that way.
I also forgot to mention that I think I’d noticed something on Terracotta Dude’s website saying the business was up for sale so mentioned it when we were chatting and he said yes he was retiring - ALERT! What if it doesn’t get sold or the new people can’t get me my pots?!
More reasons to worry.
Ok let’s not worry so much because my prototypes were on their way from 3D Dude. Say prayers.
8 prototypes arrived. 3 were grey and 3D Dude has said that was when they were trying out different approaches / speeds / nozzles or whatever. The others were a range of colours, most of which were not my cup of tea at all, but good to see. I just wanted something that looked a close match to what I was already using so people’s collections didn’t look weird. One of them was bang on the right colour - beautiful.
But there was, of course, a major issue - why wouldn’t there be?
All of them had a line down the outside where the nozzle had stopped to do the next layer. And it was SO visible. There was no way they were good enough as they were. But it’s a start I thought. I started Googling to see if there were solutions to get rid of the line and booked in a call with 3D Dude.
Above: my first prototype 3D pots (with the lines down the side)
We got on a face to face call and chatted it through. He got what I was after and said he’d work on finding a way to reduce the visibility of the line. I’d shared with him a YouTube video with a technique I’d found called a scarf seam - he’d heard of the YouTuber and said he’d look at it.
The next day I got an invoice for another £100 for work that had been done so far…. and some bad news from 3D Dude.
“I have run the current pot through our pricing algorithm and here are some indicative unit costs and showing the scaling bulk unit costs.”
Hold on to your pants…
1 pot - £8.65
10 pots - £2.20 per pot
100 pots - £1.55 per pot
£500 pots - £1.49 per pot
In bulk (well, 500) they were going to be 3 times the price of my existing pots. There was just no way I could do that without putting the prices of my kits up which I just didn’t want to do.
Had I been really stupid here in imagining that 3D printing would be an affordable solution? I guess so.
I did get another 2 samples through a couple of weeks later but the line wasn’t much better. So with that and the price being a blocker, I put that idea to bed. Lucky I only spent £250 I guess.
A while later, mid September, me knee deep in inspecting and wrapping the first 480 pots from Terracotta Dude and waiting on the next 480 to arrive, I checked in on the Tunisia progress (now we’re WhatsApp pals, you know!) - the answer…. “Shipping end of this month hopefully…”
“Hopefully” - hmmmm.
Also, my naive self didn’t appreciate that “shipping” meant a LONG time on a boat.
I mean I know what a ship is and all, but when you’ve never done this type of thing before how do I know how long a boat takes? I didn’t ask, because for some reason I just didn’t think to ask! I think I was just happy at the insinuation they were coming and I knew I had a few months worth.
Outside of worrying about pots and generally actually trying to run and grow my business, I love to learn. I’ve joined a whole bunch of small business communities since I started the business and had stumbled across Virgin Start-Up - a place for entrepreneurs offering both free and paid benefits. I’d seen on the community page that they were offering tasters of their premium benefits to free members and you could book in a 30 minute 1-1 call with some super dooper experienced people that could help you in your business.
So I booked in a call and thought “I have to use this persons experience to get me out of this pot situation”. I only had one session, and could’ve used it to talk any number of things that I wanted to learn about but I knew this was the biggest threat to my business so I had to stay focussed on that. And it was actually really useful. Virgin Dude told me that I’d done all the things he would do and my only option was to try to source a manufacturer myself in China using either a Manufacturing agent or Sourcing Agent. That was what I needed - I needed to know the language to use to find the people that I needed, which would make my random Google search a bit more targeted. Off we go again…..
“sourcing agents for china in the uk”
“manufacturing agents uk”
“sourcing agents for plant pots”
“sourcing agents for terracotta”
Soul destroying, honestly.
I spent a whole day on it and approached 11 companies, either by contact us forms or email.
Most of them I then had to chase and 5 of them to this day never replied. Of the 6 that did, one had a minimum order quantity of 50,000 pots (!!), 3 had very complicated and expensive up front fees, 1 led me up the garden path and then it all got a bit too much effort for them and bailed, and 1 gave me a quote but it was for 30mm x 30mm - too big. But they’d send me some samples of those just in case.
Head well and truly in hands I waited for the samples which took a month. They were fine, but they hadn’t shrunk in the post, they were too big.
I went back to them and asked if they could find me a manufacturer who would make them for me to my spec. Sourcing Dude said he’d have a look and come back to me. A couple of weeks later I get an email…. he’s found a manufacturer willing to do it, I’ll need to pay for tooling, molds, samples etc, what do I want to do? Oh and the minimum order quantity is 10,000!
At this stage just give me the 10,000 pots!
I don’t care if I end up selling pots on eBay in 10’s like Terracotta Dude, if I can get a supply of pots and stop worrying I’m in! Lets go!
Next issue - can it all be done in time to be shipped before Chinese New Year?
I’d had a phone call with Sourcing Dude (very helpful) where he’d explained the various (long) timescales involved in tooling, moulds, samples etc and it was now the end of October. Chinese New Year is end of January and he’d said they basically shut down for a month and then even when they start up again it takes a while to get going. Plus endless travel time at sea meant my 10,000 pots were not going to be arriving any time soon, it would be months.
No point in delaying any further so I sent over the 3D file I’d had from 3D Dude for them to use to make the mold. What was also good about this is I could have them made without the drain hole again because they were to my spec - excellent.
So I left it with Sourcing Dude to make it happen.
Meanwhile, still the end of October - the next batch of 480 are en route from Terracotta Dude…. “any update on the Tunisian pots?” I asked. I still needed this to be ok in case this whole situation with Sourcing Dude fell through, I was not out of the woods.
“There was some space left in the container so they are making a few more bits to fill it up..”
So they didn’t ship end of September then. Eeeeek, starting to get twitchy again…
I asked if there were any left at all after the last lot of 480. He said he had 240 and then there are absolutely no more until the new ones come in, and he was expecting that to be mid December.
I still hadn’t seen any of these pots from Tunisia to know if they’d even be any good.
Mid December came and I’m back on the WhatsApp to see if they’ve arrived ok and if I can have those 240? “Tunisia order delayed until 20th due to dock so won't be here until mid Jan - I am on holiday early Jan. Let me see what I can do with the remaining ones here, I have been working at home most of the month trying to get house extension finished…”
LOL
I mean…. I do know that Terracotta Dude’s house extension is important, honestly I do! But the despair at this stage was unreal. I had to laugh.
I think the only reason I could laugh at this point was because 2 days earlier the samples from China from Sourcing Dude had arrived. The outsides looked great, but the insides were a mess! It looked like someone had poked their finger in each one to hollow the middle out! But… it was promising, the outsides looked great.
I rang Sourcing Dude and asked if we could get another round of samples with improved insides and he was honest with me.
He explained that with an order of my size they weren’t making much money on it and the manufacturers had said they wouldn’t make another round of samples. But they did say that the internal quality would be improved if I put the order in. I asked if there could be any kind of guarantee if the quality didn’t improve on the final product that I could get a reduced rate and he explained (kindly) that I didn’t really have any bargaining chips. They only sweetener was that they could get me 1500 shipped by air before Chinese New Year to hopefully get me out of the hole I was currently in. So I had 2 choices…
- Abandon ship and hope the Tunisian pots arrived and were ok.
- Take a risk and hope they did a better job on the actual order.
I took the punt and put the order in. What else could I do?
I just thought at this stage I’m either getting no pots, good pots or rubbish pots from Terracotta Dude, or good pots or rubbish pots from Supplier Dude, whatever happens hopefully I’ll get some good pots and if not I’ll just have to work with what I get and explain to my customers all that I’ve done to try and get them a bloody decent flipping pot! Hopefully they’ll understand.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year we’re in January 2025. The 10th January in fact.
Email from Supplier Dude: “The factory have produced the plant pots – however they made them with the drain hole”.
Sigh.
It’s certainly not the end of the world but just really annoying! It’s 2 weeks to go now before Chinese New Year and everyone down tools. The good news though is that the outsides and insides look good!
I ask, “have they just made the first 1500 or all 11,500?”
They’ve made the lot. Of course they have!
What do I do? Take the drain hole pots and just get them travelling or wait and have them remade? The decision was made for me, 3 days later Sourcing Dude tells me the factory are remaking them and 2 boxes of 800 will be sent to me by courier before the factory closes for New Year. The rest won’t be shipped until after they get back so we’re talking April before they get to me.
Ok. I’m feeling ok. That will give me enough to last a few months.
But I’ve still not actually seen a good finished pot from them. So I wait.
A few days later I get a WhatsApp from Terracotta Dude: “Hey, pots have arrived. Look ok, better than last lot. Bagged in 100's.…”
Shit, now what? POTS GALORE!
As I said, I still don’t know if these glorious pots coming from China are actually going to be good enough, so I order 300 Tunisia pots from Terracotta Dude.
A week later the Tunisia pots arrived. I was really (really) hoping they would be great. Then, if the China pots were great too, I’d finally have 2 suppliers, a Plan B. I unpacked the box, opened the first bag, and my heart sank. They just all looked a bit off. As if they’d been pulled out of their molds by hand and all the tops had got a bit warped on the way out. The rims were thick, the bases a little narrow, just altogether not great.
Above: the long-awaited Tunisia pots
My shoulders sank again, if this had been my only option I’d be in a pickle now. All I can do now is wait for Supplier Dude’s pots to arrive from China and pray they’re ok.
Supplier Dude gave me the tracking link so I could follow their journey from China to here. Holy shitballs, I now know why air freight is so expensive. My pots went from ….
China > South Korea > Hong Kong > Dubai > Germany > Castle Donnington > Lincoln > Me
And I watched that tracking page intently at every stop for 3 days.
Thursday 6th February they arrived at my door. The anticipation was killing me! I carefully opened up the box, and started to unwrap them.
OMG - they were PERFECT! Like literally - perfect!
The odd one here and there had a little mark on, and a few got broken in transit but literally 3 or 4, no big deal. I honestly could have cried.
I sat there and just kept unwrapping more, and more, gazing at them like they were some newly found gemstone!
Above: my treasure
I will never forget the relief I felt in that moment, I 100% know that sounds a tad dramatic, but after 3 years of trying to source these damn things, I am now a manufacturer (via Supplier Dude and actual manufacturer) of my own miniature plant pots and I’m so proud about it!
The main thing I’ve been worried about all through this last year since starting the subscription kits, is having to tell my customers that either there’s no pots so it’s all over, or they have to have crap pots because I can’t get good pots. It’s been on my mind all the time and has just been all consuming.
I called Supplier Dude when the pots arrived, elated, and told him how much it meant to me. He appreciated that and I appreciated him. I know he went out of his way for me for a job that didn’t make him a lot of money. I couldn’t be more thankful.
And as for Terracotta Dude, I didn’t return the Tunisian pots. I just didn’t feel like I could after all the hoo ha. There were about 100 of the 300 that were ‘ok’ - I’ll keep those for emergencies and probably try and sell the other 200 at some point I guess. Anyone for 200 slightly wonky pots?!
I suppose I’ll finish by saying at the time of writing I’m still waiting for the remainder of my 10,000 pots! I have no idea where in the world they are right now but hopefully they are heading in my direction and will be with me in April. Where the chuff I’m going to store them when they get here I have no idea!
I’ll also finish up with a few lessons / takeaways from this 3 year long pot-chase, so here goes…
- Do your research upfront before committing to a product that you’re going to need to source (much) more of.
- Googling without knowing the language will get you nowhere, find a way to find out the language.
- When in doubt, buy more stock. Just in case.
- Sourcing and manufacturing, takes months. And more months. I’m already worrying about when I might need to order again!
- Sometimes, you just have to take the punt.
- Quality being a non-negotiable holds you back, but I don’t regret it.
- The perfect pot does exist. It just takes three years, umpteen suppliers, and sheer stubbornness to find it.