>> Hi, and welcome to Inside Louisville, where we introduce you to the people, places and things that make up Kentucky's largest city.

This week we go inside Hadley Pottery.

Now, you'd be hard pressed to find a Louisville home that doesn't have a piece of Hadley pottery in it.

The ceramics and stoneware business was founded in 1939 by local artist and businesswoman Mary Alice Hadley, whose unique painting style continues in the pieces on display in the Butchertown store today.

But it was just a few years ago when the story of Hadley Pottery seemed to be coming to an end.

The store announced it was closing its doors and the neighborhood showed up to show its support.

And so did one local investor, who is now writing a new chapter for Hadley Pottery.

>> Hadley Pottery opened up in this building in the 1940s, just down the street from where the Hadley's lived in Butchertown, and it's operated here ever since.

[MUSIC] But every business begins with an idea, and this one was born on a boat.

>> Hadley Pottery started actually in the very late 30s with Mary Alice Hadley.

She had a boat that her and her husband liked to entertain on and relax on the river.

>> Mary Alice Hadley couldn't find dishes that she liked that were sturdy enough for a ride on the river.

>> She just decided to make her own.

>> On clay sculpted dishes.

She hand-painted nautical and river designs.

>> Fired them, brought them on the boat, and all of her guests loved it.

They all wanted their very own.

They wanted things custom.

And that's how the business started.

>> In 1944, they bought this building so that Mary Alice could produce her popular pottery.

>> It's all been in this building ever since the mid 40s.

>> And what's made here can be found all over.

>> So at one point, Hadley was sold in Bloomingdale's and Gumps and other fine establishments.

They actually found pieces of Hadley in a shop in France.

>> While Hadley Pottery was becoming more known in the US and internationally, Mary Alice Hadley's signature on each piece led her to take on a bit of a mistaken identity.

>> I've talked to customers over the years.

They'll call and they'll they'll call it Ma Hadley Pottery.

I think a lot of people imagine Mary Alice to be kind of like the sweet little old lady in the country painting farm animals, but she was this young, vibrant, eccentric kind of artist.

She's very stylish.

[MUSIC] I've seen it written that she was kind of pixie like, but she was five foot one.

She was very kind of thin, kind of small, but she had a very fiery kind of personality.

[MUSIC] She always walked around in her kind of swinging back heels.

So you always heard her coming.

She was a smoker too, and I think she would have her long cigarette holder.

She's very animated.

[MUSIC] >> Most employees at Hadley Pottery have heard of passed down story or two about the Pottery's founder.

Like a story from a nearby church.

>> You can see the steeple right there.

>> That asked Mary Alice to offer some redecorating advice and as the story goes.

>> Is that she walked in to a church with a long stem cigarette and a martini glass.

>> She also liked to create all different kinds of art.

One of her proudest accolades.

>> After the pottery was established in the 1950s.

Her brown fleck design, which is in the cabinet over here that won the Good Design Award from the Museum of Modern Art, and there are still pieces on display there.

>> Mary Alice Hadley ran her popular pottery business until her death in 1965 at the age of 54.

>> After Mary Alice passed away, George continued to own it until the late 70s.

>> Since then, it's changed hands a few more times, each owner striving to keep the pottery viable and Mary Alice's legacy alive.

But in 2022, Hadley Pottery announced it would close for good.

The expenses from major repairs, equipment maintenance and replacements were too much to overcome.

>> All that stuff costs a lot of money and it just kind of became impossible to keep up with that and continue fulfilling orders.

So they made the announcement to close, I think, in April of 2022, and it wasn't until later that year that the current owner, Brooke Smith, purchased it.

>> And hired general manager Taylor Stone to help bring the business back to life.

>> So there has been a lot of changes in the last four years.

>> Upgrades to equipment, new kilns after the gigantic one they used since 1981 broke down a couple of years ago.

[MUSIC] >> It was a big challenge to figure out how to keep our production up after this went down.

It was kind of a scary moment of like, what are we going to do?

So it's all kind of newer, shinier looking stuff, but it's the exact same process, the same type of equipment.

>> An age old process that starts with a meticulously crafted mold.

>> And then over there is actually he's our mold maker.

This remake, part of the process of bringing this business back to life, is remaking all the molds.

Almost.

[MUSIC] I call them the plaster master.

>> Molds are used to shape the clay, either by a press.

>> But it just has two dies on the top and bottom that make the shape.

>> Slip cast.

>> Once it's dried completely, they'll take this two two parts apart and you'll have your shape in there.

>> Or jigger jolly.

>> Jollying is when you fill up the inside of a plaster mold with the softer clay and you shape it out.

And then what Isabel is doing here is she's going to drop.

This is what we call a shoe.

That shoe is the last piece.

She'll she'll drop that jig down and that shoe and that'll finish off the shape.

>> Then the rough edges are tidied up.

>> And what he's doing is he's taking that edge off and then smoothing out this so that it's ready to be hand painted.

>> In the paint department.

Mary Alice's legacy is top of mind.

While painting her signature designs.

>> Kind of the spirit of Mary Alice is always here.

We paint her name on the back of every piece.

So yeah, we're always thinking about her.

>> It then gets sprayed with a white glaze, then fired to become a one of a kind Hadley pottery piece, often cherished for generations or gifted for special occasions.

[MUSIC] >> It's pretty neat to know that just this piece of essentially dirt is going to be transformed into something that that people treasure.

>> Through it all, the pottery strives to follow in the footsteps of its founder.

>> You know, we've asked this question to ourselves a bunch of times of like, what would Mary Alice do?

And we know that she was super creative.

[MUSIC] We know that she liked to paint on everything.

We know that she tried new things.

[MUSIC] So I think, like our most recent version of that is like, let's continue to try new things.

Let's like, be creative.

Let's not hold ourselves back like Mary Alice was so far ahead of her time.

[MUSIC] Like, how do we think that way to be ahead of our time?

>> As a business?

Hadley Pottery does just that, staying ahead of the times while being rooted in its authentic past.

For Inside Louisville, I'm Kristi Dutton.

>> Brooke Smith is the owner now of Hadley Pottery.

Thank you so much for being here.

And so this is a business that has such deep roots in Louisville and was slated to close several years ago, and they basically said, we're closing our doors.

People came out from all over and trying to get the last pieces of Hadley Pottery, and then you step in as an investor and entrepreneur and really a customer.

>> Yeah, I guess technically I was a customer via my mother and even her mother for quite a while.

Yeah.

I mean, who doesn't know Hadley Pottery?

>> Come on.

>> Yeah, it's a Louisville.

It's a Louisville icon.

When the stories came out about it closing, I remember my mom calling me and she was crying about it.

She was just it was such a part of of her life when she grew up.

You know, I, I can't tell how many spaghetti and meatballs I ate out of Hadley bowls.

>> Right, right.

>> How many?

You know, cups of soup.

And so when I heard that in her voice, it made me sad, too, because I could remember when I was a kid, my mom would take me in there when I was, you know, just a little ankle biter.

And it was like going into Willy Wonka or something.

I mean, it was the smell and the heat, and then just even the vibration of the floors was magical, you know?

And so she would look around and I'd go down the different aisles and kind of just check out what was going on.

And of all the memories I had as a, as a young boy, the trips to Hadley with my mom are definitely towards the top of the list.

>> Wow.

So.

So tell me about your background.

And you were an entrepreneur and investor.

Grew up here in Louisville?

>> Yeah, yeah, entrepreneur and investor.

It's interesting.

You know, it kind of gets worn out a bit, but but I have a passion and a fascination with pretty much life in general.

But then, you know, business and how things connect.

And is there a different angle that you could take, maybe by surrounding yourself with people that have kind of the, the experiential knowledge of whatever you're working on and, you know, an investment in a business like Hadley first, first starts out as an investment of passion.

You know, if you can imagine the average price 30, $40 for a piece.

Granted, today we have things that Mary Alice didn't have, like the internet.

In fact, a lot of our sales come through through those channels.

Yeah, but, you know, it's an artisan.

It's an artisan product.

There's a lot of man hours.

It's hand-painted.

The production is, you know, a process.

So the overhead to just kind of turn the lights on and say, hey, we're going to produce this stuff is no, no, you know, short order.

And so.

I think when you get into things like that and we have to make those types of investments, we can't just say, oh, this is a great investment.

And it's, you know, storage and you know, you can put the money in and, you know, in five years we'll have X. I mean, granted, you have to do those types of things, but if we all make those of us that do do private investing, if we all make a bit of room kind of in our Stack to do some of these investments of passion, of social importance, you know, if we don't, everything goes away.

Yeah.

You know, oh, you remember Hadley Pottery?

I mean, that would be a very sad thing to say.

Yeah.

And it's not just around Kentucky, Louisville, it's nationally.

So.

It's been a quest to take over a business.

It's a dirty business.

And it's allowed and complicated business.

But but the product that comes out is, is so unique and so Americana and so Louisville.

So Kentucky.

Yeah.

So so yeah, I think when you do these types of things, you just have to have the stomach to say, you know, I'm going to commit to it.

And the first year or two are going to be pretty bumpy.

There's going to be a lot of money going in and no money coming out.

But if you if you stick to that and you know, okay, hey, eventually and then you learn everything you can, I mean, I'm not I mean, if you ask me to make a plate or a bowl, that would look like something I did when I was in the third grade, right?

Nobody would be interested in it except for maybe my parents.

But.

But anyway, you know, you have to find the expertise, or you have to find someone that can own it.

And early on, I'd like to give Greg Rockman a shout out.

He came involved and he kind of helped me navigate some things.

And most recently, Taylor Stone has done an incredible job.

You know, he's involved in a lot of different things.

And he and I have the same philosophy, which is if you're going to get involved in something, go see how other people do it.

So Taylor in particular has traveled really around the country to other kind of artisan stoneware, ceramic pottery types of places and the, the nuggets that we've picked up, you know, from how they operate is been very valuable.

And most businesses will open their doors and say, oh, hey, yeah, we know Hadley and come on in, you know?

And so whether it be in the East Coast, the West Coast, but it's a voyage and we, we had a ship that was in a storm and the sails were tattered and there was a hole in the hull of the boat.

But we've patched that, we've fixed the sails, and now the ship is actually okay.

We can plot a course versus just try to keep the boat above water.

Yeah, that's I think that's where we are right now.

>> Okay.

So I think that's what a lot of people wonder.

You know, a lot of people think it went away and it's always it's it's been here this whole time.

And but like you touched on a little bit as an investor, you know, the the family that owned it previously.

Yes.

Said they just couldn't keep up the cost of it.

And so what are you doing differently that's going to make it stay profitable.

>> If you have any ideas I'll take them.

No.

Well yeah.

Again they family they, they it was, it was a, you know a business of passion for them as well.

Sure.

And it takes an enormous amount of staying power.

And they, they just got to a point where, you know, just, it just didn't make sense for them anymore.

And so in fact, when I, when I heard it was closing, I tried like crazy to get Ahold of them.

And it took me a while.

And finally I, you know, almost everything would stand outside the door and see if they walk in.

And because they were tired of hearing about people, oh, hey, I'm interested in this or.

>> That, right?

>> You know, there's some groups out there, I think, that would love to have, you know, the IP, the actual Hadley designs and things like that, and they could do something with it.

But, you know, that's still kind of left the business behind.

And, you know, I think when you get involved in these things, the first thing you have to do is step back and look at it and say, okay, first of all, we want to have a safe environment.

We want to have an environment where the people that work are safe and we take care of them.

Then you have to look at, okay, well, how are how is how are these things made?

What pieces of equipment.

You know, is it is it are these pieces of equipment outdated?

Does it make sense to add a few things?

How do you kind of phase that in?

I mean, even just the layout of how stuff is produced and the timing, I mean, it's all anything in manufacturing.

It's all about.

>> All expensive ventures.

>> Exactly.

Yeah.

So we we did we stepped back and we we made a lot of decisions probably, you know, in the beginning maybe half of them were incorrect but but but set us on a.

>> Path learning.

>> Yes.

And then we we we learned a lot from what we saw other other similar businesses doing.

And you know, do we need to do this?

Do we need to do that?

Wait a minute.

We're making this particular piece.

But the the the customer doesn't really order a lot of it.

You know, maybe we can do something custom fine.

But if it's custom, you know, it's expensive.

It's expensive to produce.

So we looked at all the things that we were creating and we leaned into certain certain like products.

We also introduced new products.

You know, the who doesn't want to beautiful Hadley ceramic with a candle in it.

You know, we have a great partnership there.

We even recently did something really interesting where if you've been in the Hadley building, there's all these paintings that Mary Alice did throughout the building, like on the the old, you know, the old door, the elevator or a sliding door that separates rooms.

And and we sat around and we said, hey, maybe we should take some of these images and then produce a print series of some of these things that Mary Alice has done.

>> Sure.

A lot of investors, though, I think could come in and decide to take over this, this place and move manufacturing somewhere else.

That's a lot cheaper.

Why was it important for you to keep in the tradition of this particular building, where everything happens there?

>> Great question.

One.

You know, it's been there.

It's it's historic.

So it's relevant.

I think, you know, even if we grow and we have manufacturing done, you know, across the street or wherever, it's always going to be in the vein of what Hadley's all about to have that activity on site where the pottery, we know we have a showroom.

It's just important.

And it really relates again, back to the people because they've been there a long time.

They've developed the Hadley style.

We've added, we've grown, so we've added some new people to that mix with some of the old folks that have been there, older or younger, that have been there a while.

And we're we're developing kind of a new a bit of a new style.

We're still in the vein of Hadley, but we've introduced some, you know, you know, some interesting things that could be the next generation of Hadley.

And we want people to have that experience like I did when I walked in and the floor was shaking.

Right.

So we are in the process of starting a significant renovation of the building.

And one of the things from an investor's perspective that made sense for me to get involved with Hadley was the real estate.

There was a gentleman who owned the property who went back to his days, where he was friends with Mary Alice, and he was so generous in that he didn't charge the business much of anything for rent, because he also saw it as something that needed to survive.

And so when I looked at it and just held my thumb up and thought, wow, this is going to require time and capital, you know what?

What's the safety net or backstop?

And so I went to him and said, look, I am considering, you know, kind of acquiring this business and putting some new wind in its sale.

But in order to make sense of that, I really kind of need to own the real estate.

So if you can give me a fair price, maybe even a friends and family price on the real estate, because it sits on a 5 or 6 acre footprint of land, then I can make sense of this and I'm ready to go.

I'm not a developer.

I've been involved in development and I've development partners.

But to get the real estate at a fair price and have kind of real equity in it, out of the gates, you know, when you're writing all these checks, at least you're telling yourself, hey, you know, for some reason this doesn't work.

And guess what?

Sometimes these things don't work.

Just like the prior owners.

But that's turned out to be Boone been great.

In fact, I think we have plans to do a kind of a Hadley Square development there on the property that would be integrated with Hadley.

We're talking about some apartments, you know, kind of a middle tier, solid quality product.

That's a great area.

>> Yeah.

>> Up and.

Coming apartments are needed.

Yeah.

You know, and so we have some stuff in process there.

So I think if you fast forward, I'd like to think that you'll see that Hadley is continue to be in maybe re again a prolific you know Americana brand with this kind of mixed use apartment.

Maybe get a good anchor restaurant in there.

And it's a beautiful piece of land if you've seen it.

I think we all driven by it.

>> Sure.

>> And it's with, with the, the creek there and so so we have some plans in process on that.

But the renovation of the building will start immediately.

Really.

We've kind of we've developed a relationship with local bank stockyards who have to give them a shout out.

They're great at historic renovations.

And, you know, there's these historic tax credit renovations that really incentivize someone to renovate an old building because of the tax benefits.

And I think, I think the building's going to come back to life.

And we can we can freshen up the showroom but not take it.

Spirit.

Yeah.

So there's so many things that are kind of taking shape.

>> Yeah.

>> That's it's been a it's been a slugfest to be honest the last few years.

But one it's worth it.

>> Yeah.

>> My goal for Hadley is to just get it to where it's, you know, it's it's really a viable business.

It's not a invest in, get rich kind of thing.

You know, it's an invest, preserve, appreciate.

And, you know, I think when you look back at whatever you've done in your career, it's the the Hadley Potteries that, that most people wouldn't tackle that are challenging.

But it's about the preservation of history and culture and all the things that people just expect to carry on on their own.

It doesn't happen that way.

It just doesn't.

So we have to stand up and do that kind of thing.

And again, it's not easy.

Don't try this at home I guess.

Or actually I am trying this at home.

>> Yeah, but but also to other investors to have something like that as a passion project.

It's it helps everybody in the community.

No question.

It's the, it's the investment in, in community rather than it is making money.

>> I mean, there's a ability to create jobs, right?

As we go through the renovation and we can, you know, reset the showroom, modernize it, but not lose kind of the touch and feel and the soul of it.

I think that people will go, wow, this is amazing.

>> Tell me real quick what is your vision for the future of Hadley Pottery?

What do you want it to be ten, 20 years from now?

>> I want it to be here.

That's the first vision.

I think that having a development that also speaks to Hadley and some apartments that would have Hadley tiles in the bathroom and things like this, if I could look ahead, I would love to see our continued reset and growth of the existing core products.

I think there's a chance, slowly but surely, to probably triple or quadruple the the sales of that stuff.

I think there's a lot of opportunity for collaboration.

I think if you look out 5 or 10 years.

I think Hadley's going to be here and I think, you know, Hadley will grow into what it needs to grow into, but then there's an enormous amount of potential for it to be even something that people are talking about around the country, whether it be a specific stoneware piece or a collaboration, you know, with a company that makes stuff that, you know, takes the Hadley and kind of interacts it with their product.

So you can tell I'm excited about it.

Yeah.

These are the kind of things that once they disappear, they generally don't come back.

So we all need to think about that as we, you know, we look at our daily lives and then when people take risk to preserve things, you know, it's something that I think should be appreciated, not because someone wants to slap on the back, but because the history and culture of a region, an area or Americana is, is preserved.

And it's it's vital.

>> You can watch and share this episode anytime at streaming at Keturah Louisville and go with us behind the scenes to learn more about Mary Hadley's story and how her legacy is still alive inside the store today.

That's when you follow us on social media.

You can find us on Instagram at KETinLOU.

Thanks for spending a little time getting to know Louisville.

I hope we'll see you here next time.

Until then, make it a great week!