The Pottery’s closing is just the beginning, Craven says
Out with the old, in with the new
By Jana A. Mitcham
Joe Craven doesn’t like endings.
He’s more of a look-ahead guy, and even as he was packing up his office of 23 years last Thursday morning, he was talking about what will come next after The Pottery is completely closed and torn down.
Out with the old, in with the new.
To illustrate his way of thinking, Craven described the horse and rider artwork of a Western sculptor James Earle Fraser known as “The End of the Trail.” Both horse and rider are weary and their heads are hanging low.
“Nobody ever made one of the beginning of the trail,” he said. “I’d rather look at that. It’s been a long trail, but it’s time for a new beginning. There is no ending.”
Monday was the last day of open sales for The Pottery at Banks Crossing, which Craven located there in 1984, after first opening his business in Gillsville in 1971. All remaining merchandise will be auctioned off December 12, and Craven and a few remaining employees will have until the end of January to completely close out the long-standing business. The Gillsville manufacturing plant, which produces red clay pots, statuary and potting soil, will be open to customers until the new store is built.
But, that’s not all there is to the story.
While he is keeping the exact nature of his “new concept” somewhat under wraps, Craven said he plans to open a store with “low overhead, low prices and unique quality products” as part of a new development at the same location come fall of 2008 or spring of 2009. Craven also is exploring the option of having several stores across the Southeast.
“We’re projecting to remove the existing buildings immediately, and construction of the new building it projected to start May 1,” Craven said. “We hope to maintain old customers and attract new.”
At “29 years and 372 months” old, Craven admits to having a brief thought of retirement.
“Originally, when I put this on the market, I was going to retire,” he said. “Then, about three months ago, I woke up and wondered what I’d do if I didn’t have here to come to. All my decisions come from the hip…I’ve worked 37 years, seven days a week, but I never went to work. I enjoy coming to work, I enjoy people.”
So, instead of looking to a “big vacation,” Craven is looking ahead to months of designing and developing new products to “make an impression on our customers.”
He’s come full circle, in a way.
“To look at this empty building reminds me of when I was starting, of when I was building it,” he said.
GROWING A BUSINESS
Son of J.W. Craven and the late Mamie Craven, Billy Joe Craven grew up in Gillsville, attended Banks County High School and spent two years in the military serving in Vietnam.
He came home and started a business in 1971 in a chicken house out back, selling the red clay pots he had learned to “throw” while working for Hewell Pottery in his early teens and throughout high school.
“I grew that business and continued to grow it for more than 30 years,” he said. “I’m a self-taught businessman, I guess you might say...I live, eat and breathe numbers. I get excited.”
Craven’s great-grandfather was a potter and the Craven name dates to a long line of potters. Today, his son and grandson are potters. When he gets a chance, Craven still puts his hands to the potter’s wheel for “a little folk pottery now and then.”
“Pottery has an emotion to it,” he said. “What pottery does for me, it’s a warm, comfortable feeling I get…I probably have more flowerpots than anyone in the world.”
“This is my drawer of memorabilia,” Craven said, looking through a desk drawer for an article that describes his start in the pottery business. “The other day I was rambling through my junk, and here’s a copy right here….this is a very true story.”
Craven described an evening in March of 1971 when the sky was blowing snow and he had just fired up his kiln.
“I lived in a little mobile home next to the pottery shop,” he said. “Out of the darkness came four headlights from two pick-up trucks. Two men — Elvin Owen and Ira Goin — bought everything I’d made….I kept both of those customers ‘til they died, and their families still buy.”
“It’s been ‘owen and goin’ ever since,” he laughed.
He added: “I can’t explain it to you, but the hard days were the best days when you look back on them. I was making pots on the wheel myself, and barely keeping my family fed.”
A GOOD DECISION
Craven made his first buying trip out of the company to Italy in 1972. Since then, he has traveled to 23 countries and imported from 19.
But the short trip from Gillsville to a patch of land off Hwy. 441 proved to be his most successful.
Craven had been buying land along and along, and he ended up with 175 acres at the junction of Hwy. 441 and I-85.
“Our little business at Gillsville, we felt a need to have more exposure, a more modern facility and a larger one,” he said. “Now we need a more modern facility, but a smaller one.”
In the early 1980s, when Craven built The Pottery at Banks Crossing, there were no other retailers nearby.
“There was the Davis Brothers Café, the old Union Oil truck stop, McDonald’s and Holiday Inn,” Craven said. “I’m one of the few local business people who capitalized on the location. People thought I was crazy when I started buying land here in ’75, but with 368 employees in our peak years and about $50 million a year in sales, it proved out to be a good location.”
“To be honest, I had no more foresight than anyone else,” he admitted. “I bought here because I lived near here. I felt the business was of a nature to draw customers, and access to I-85 was important.”
When Craven first opened The Pottery, it was in a 40,000-square-foot building.
“In less than six months, we had to build on, and it’s been continuous expansion,” he said. “With the garden center and the outdoor (areas), it was up to one million square feet of shopping. We were able to draw customers from all over the Southeast, and I remember counting license plates in the parking lot and seeing 28 different states.”
“I always figured it was an original business, but the icing on the cake was the access to the whole world, almost,” he added with a nod toward the interstate. “This business was an evolution. We went into numerous things that were all related — from pottery to plants to soil to baskets, silk flowers…on to home décor….In our heyday, we were supplying Kmart, Sears, Home Depot, Sam’s Club…”
The whole Banks Crossing area began expanding in 1986-87, Craven said, adding that the opening of Tanger I in 1987 really “gave a big boost.”
“Now we have more than 140 stores, 30 restaurants, 11 motels,” he said. “The road went from two lanes to seven lanes and from no traffic to congestion.”
During The Pottery’s years of expansion, Craven said has made a point to convey to his family and employees a humanitarian obligation and to instill the philosophy of helping others.
“We’ve literally employed thousands of young people,” he said. “We had a payroll of $9 million a year that mostly went to the local community.”
“At the same time, we’ve had the support of the local people and local governments,” Craven added. “I can’t go without saying I really appreciate all the support.”
“A COLORFUL LIFE”
While Craven’s story is one of business success by anyone’s standards, he remains down to earth. His cell phone’s ring tone is that of farm animals braying and squawking and oinking. His office bookshelves are lined with family photographs, and there’s a painting of a dog on one wall. He wears a baseball cap with a “Control Freak” logo on it. He likes to shell and eat peanuts behind his desk.
“I don’t think anybody’s better than anybody else,” he said. “In my eyes, we’re all equal at birth and at death. In the middle’s up to you. In America, you can pretty much do anything.”
“My formula is, if I put God first and people next, success will surely happen — I attribute it in that order,” he said. “And, of course, you give 110 percent.”
So, in Craven’s life, The Pottery is merely a chapter that has come to an end, not the story itself.
In retrospect, when all is said and done, if it was the ending, he’d probably be OK with that, too.
“I’ve had a colorful life,” he said. “Mama and Daddy were farmers and we were dirt poor. I’ve lived on biscuits, cornbread and milk, and I’ve lived on lobster and caviar, too. It’s the American Dream, and if it ended today, I couldn’t ask for anything else.”
