From tariffs to spending, economic anxiety hits hard at Minneapolis pottery studio

The kilns at the Workshop are parked out back, waiting to transform the mugs, bowls and vases students made at the south Minneapolis pottery studio from clay to ceramic.

It’s a process born of raw materials from all over the world: porcelain from England; steel from China; natural gas from Canada. In less turbulent times, studios like The Workshop can count on reliable access to materials from around the world for their steady stream of customers.

“When folks walk through this door, they don’t really understand,” said owner Jennie Tang. “We are mining everything.”

As President Donald Trump’s nascent trade war unfolds, the ceramics industry’s reliance on international trade spells uncertainty for the Workshop. Tariffs on major U.S. trading partners and stubborn inflation mean higher costs for the small business. That economic anxiety is also hitting consumers, translating into fewer students able to pay hundreds of dollars to attend a class.

Like small-business owners everywhere, Tang is dealing with the stresses of a new international trade war on top of the typical pressures, big and small, that come with her operation.

As she manages suppliers and tracks shifting prices, Tang is also facing down an April 10 deadline to buy the building housing the Workshop, a former takeout pizza joint she’s rented for nearly a decade. The goal is in sight: A GoFundMe fundraising campaign is closing in on an $85,000 target, and on Tuesday evening, Tang told her students the business had been approved for a loan.

Still, there are a lot of unknowns.

“People are nervous, and rightfully so,” Tang said. The business, she said, has been trying “to be really open with people about what our costs are, as much as we can, to be transparent about how this business works, and then also to recognize there is great value in having a process and having a creative place to play.”

Small businesses are particularly vulnerable in this moment of economic precarity, with less negotiating power to adjust supply chains and less bandwidth to weather a financial hit.

In the past few years, Tang has seen prices jump for staples the Workshop relies on — the equivalent of eggs, milk and butter in the ceramics world, she said.

Porcelain imported from England has jumped from $1.31 a pound in late 2022 to $3.16 a pound. Feldspar, used in clay, glazes and other materials, cost 45 cents a pound when it came from the Custer mine in South Dakota; with that operation now closed, alternatives from India or Spain cost six times that.

The shifting tariff landscape only adds to the stress.

“It feels like every day we wake up and there’s a new announcement about tariffs that may or may not affect — probably will affect — your company,” said Zoë Levin, CEO and founder of Minneapolis-based Bim Bam Boo, which is transitioning manufacturing from China to Canada for its bamboo toilet tissue, Bambooty wipes and other sustainable household paper products. “There has to be a budget essentially set aside for this in everyone’s cost of goods projections in order to be able to navigate it.”

Caren Schweitzer, CEO and founder of Hopkins-based Creative Resources Agency, which develops custom branded merchandise for clients, started building relationships with factories in China 25 years ago. Her company will likely continue to source from China, which dominates branded merchandise manufacturing, though she’s expecting to have to absorb higher costs. China is facing a new 20% tariff on all goods, on top of those Trump imposed during his first term.

“We’re not going to see an impact and all of a sudden all these manufacturers pop up in the U.S.,” Schweitzer said. “I think that we’re in a time of unpredictability, and I think that that’s a scary place to be.”

Small-business owners can’t be expected to get through this alone, said Kingshuk Sinha, professor and chairman of the supply chain and operations department at the Carlson School of Management. There’s a role for state government to play in incentivizing small businesses, he said, as well as for consumers in supporting them to the degree they can.

“This is fundamental to survival and fundamental to our own quality of life,” he said. “We are not doing each other a favor. We are doing, actually, something necessary to weather the storm that we are in right now.”

A dozen students filled the Workshop during Tang’s Tuesday evening class, a handful throwing pots at the edges of the bright space while others molded hand-built objects at a central table.

Nora Dahlgren, who lives a few blocks from the studio, said she signed up for classes the day she retired and has been a regular in the eight years since — through the pandemic, when students picked up clay to go; through the fear of nearly losing the building this year, after the owner notified Tang she had just 60 days to buy it or leave.

“That was a major crisis,” Dahlgren said.

Pre-booking for summer classes has been sluggish, Tang said, possibly because students have been unsure about the future of the building and, with it, the business.

Though there’s a core group of regulars, pottery classes are a discretionary budget item that’s easy to cut. Some students have recently stopped attending due to financial pressures. Multiple students recently lost federal government contracts, Tang said, and attending the Workshop was the first thing to go.

St. Paul resident Adam Mortge, who on Tuesday was sculpting a maker’s mark to stamp his pottery, said he would like to buy a house but can’t afford it right now — and if he could, he wouldn’t be able to afford classes anymore.

Tang is intent on keeping the Workshop open to as many people as possible, even as rising material costs make it harder to sustain tuition. She offers scholarships and payment plans on a case-by-case basis, as well as hour-long pop-in classes for people at all levels.

“If I want to cater to people who can pay $400 for a class, I can do that, but that’s against my business ethics,” she said. “My business ethics have always been, how do I create space for people to have experience at all [skill and income] levels?”

On Tuesday, father and daughter David and Audrey Winecoff of St. Louis Park worked side by side at pottery wheels. The class was a Christmas gift from David, who said he chose the Workshop because it was more affordable, accessible and geared toward beginners than other studios he considered.

Partway through class, he took a seat next to Tang as she worked at a wheel. She demonstrated how to trim the rough edges from the lid of a still-pliable jar, curls of clay falling away to reveal a smooth surface as the object took shape.

“Does this feel like it’s plausible, possible, a thing you can do?” she asked.

“What could go wrong?” he joked.

“Truer words were never spoken in a pottery studio,” Tang replied. “What could go wrong?”