Franchise owner creates ‘ceramic takeaway’ to survive Covid-19

By Laura Kingston

Popolo Ceramico is a personalised ceramics business, specialising in capturing baby and children’s hand and footprints on ceramics and paint-your-own pottery painting.

There are 15 branches throughout the UK and each franchisee comes into contact with hundreds of parents and young children each year, as they capture their prints and help them with paint-your-own pottery.

Jen Shek took over Popolo Ceramico Newcastle just over a year ago, whilst the branch itself has been established for nearly 10 years. Jen told us how she completely changed the way she worked to ensure that she could continue working safely and not endanger the lives of her customers or her family.

 “When I first found out about the virus that was starting to sweep the UK, I had just finished the last of my orders for Mother’s Day 2020, and I was delivering them back to customers. Normally, I would be starting the run-up to Easter straight after Mother’s Day, which would mean exhibiting at lots of Easter Fairs, attending children’s classes, capturing prints and running paint-your-own pottery events. As the country went into lockdown and all events and fairs were cancelled, it was very clear that with no orders rolling in, my business along with many others were going to be affected. We had a virtual team meeting to discuss the best way to move forward.”