What the Dickens does Matthew Rice think he is playing at? Every-one knows the British ceramics manufacturing industry is dying. Waterford Wedgwood collapsed into administration earlier this year. Royal Doulton is no more. Yet here is Mr Rice, sitting in the factory he co-owns with his wife, Emma Bridgewater, discussing how they can double sales. And while he does so, rather than tearing his hair out over low-cost imports, he is drawing. Pictures of ducks, mostly. The cheek!
It is as if these upper-crust Southerners think they can just breeze into grimy Stoke-on-Trent, whose recent history is of lacerating industrial decline, buy a pot factory, start making pots and then sell them to people at a profit.
The thing is, that is exactly what Ms Bridgewater and Mr Rice have done at their Emma Bridgewater business. It turned over around ￡7.5m last year, with a net profit margin of around 5 per cent, says Mr Rice. December and January, months when the full impact of the recession first hit many consumer businesses, yielded record sales and doubled profit margins. Mr Rice, who is wearing a velvet jacket and a floral shirt - apparel as alien to Stoke as a space suit - expects to raise turnover to ￡15m in five years. "Though that is only a plan," he self-deprecatingly says, not wanting to look a show-off.