We recently connected with Sarah Ogden and have shared our conversation below.
Sarah, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My grandfather, over his lifetime, tried on many jobs and started many businesses. One of my favorites was the Yum Yum shop, the first self-serve ice cream sunday bar in Winterpark Florida! My Grandmother also worked very hard, she had her own recruiting firm. As a child, I remember visiting her at her office, in this big fancy white office building with white columns outside. Feeling like she had the most important job in the world, I would get to sit at my little desk with a typewriter and have fun typing nonsense for the afternoon. That showed me from a young age that if you worked hard and did something that made you happy you could have success, you just needed to put in the work. Nothing comes for free.
My parents also showed me that hard work pays off; they own their own companies. My father has a catering company, and I worked for him in high school. That was some of my hardest work: setting up, cooking, customer service, cleaning, and breaking down. I also worked in the office, answering phones, learning how to write contracts, and doing prep work in the kitchen. I did everything with him. I learned that if you want to have your own business, you have to do what needs to be done; sometimes, you’re the one doing all the jobs and working at all hours of the day.
I also learned this from my Mother, once my parents got divorced she needed a way to support my siblings and I but also be available to pick us up from school and drive us to our extracurricular activities. She ended up joining my grandmother’s recruiting firm, turning it into a family business. Again, she taught me that if you put in the work, which for her was around our schedules (while we were at school, at night, whenever she had free time), it would pay off. She took care of our needs and was a great role model.
Before I started SMO Ceramics, I was part of the family recruiting firm—three generations of women working together, which was pretty amazing, but my passion lay with making things with my hands!
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I fell in love with clay while taking courses in ceramics at Community College SF. I loved seeing the joy that my creations brought friends and family and wanted to spread that enjoyment further. As a result, SMO (an acronym for Sarah Michelle Ogden) was started in 2017 from my apartment in Lower Haight (SF). Finding inspiration in the small moments that brighten a day, from a bowl of fruit to a neighborhood dog park, I aim to amplify life’s positive forces through my work and bring that energy into personal spaces.
I lived in that apartment for 15 years and in SF for 18, but in March 2024, my partner, two cats, and I moved south to Long Beach! SMO Ceramics is still alive and well, but I am taking a little time in the background to think about my business, redesign my website, and so on before moving into a new studio. I think it’s important as an artist to have time to think about the future without the pressure of producing and paying the bills! I’m also enjoying setting up our new place and exploring Southern California again. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, but it’s been long!
I hope the future of SMO brings more time for creativity and more face-to-face time with the community. I love meeting everyone and connecting with shoppers, other creative makers, and artists.
My website is still active, and I brought down lots of stock: dishes, coasters, magnets, pins, stickers, and hats! Please check it out and please support my micro business during this transitional period <3
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Perseverance, drive, and the willingness to learn and improve are the three qualities that have most impacted me on my journey so far. No one said starting your own business would be easy; in fact, it’s the opposite! Capitalism is set up for big business, and the government favors big business. Every step of the way, you will hit a wall, and something is going to get in your way. You’ll need those qualities to be able to succeed, breakthrough, continue, and be happy!
So why do it? Everyone has their reasons. For me, as I said before, I love the community. I love how people stop when they see my work, the glint they get in their eyes, and the joy it brings. I love that I can create my hours and my workspace, but again, working for yourself is not for everyone; you need to have that drive to set a schedule, to push yourself to work when you don’t want to, when no one is telling you you have to do it but yourself.
I also love the community of makers and artists. I feel like they are my coworkers, haha. Being an artist can sometimes be lonely and isolating. A lot of time, I am alone in my studio, listening to music, an audiobook, or watching something, so having that community online and in-person at events is amazing. People are so welcoming, and there is so much knowledge and wisdom to be shared, and lots of “water cooler” gossiping to do! I loved hosting Art Marts in my studio in SF; it was a way to invite cool makers into my space, not only to give them a place to sell their awesome work but also to get to know them better!
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
One of my goals for 2024 is to collaborate more, people always say you don’t get into ceramics to be a millionaire!
Making ceramics involves a lot of overhead and takes a lot of time, and if you’re making them alone, you can only make as much as your two hands can do at a time! Over the last few years, I’ve tried to diversify by offering different products like stickers and hats. It’s been so much fun taking inspiration from my ceramics and turning them into digital art pieces. I’ve also gotten inspiration from all the cute tchotchkes in my studio! I’ve enjoyed creating things outside the ceramics studio; I was producing a lot of work for wholesale orders and was reaching burnout, so I was glad to have time to recharge my creative juices. Having a product available for people to grab and go is also nice!
So yes! In 2024, I’d love to take that idea to the next level: collaborations! I’d love to design products for brands/artists I love and have them produce them because, for a micro business, it’s expensive to produce a new product, but also, they are the experts! They know how many shirts to buy and what sizes. They know how many units to buy and where from! I am very much for the school of thought “work smarter not harder”. I’d love to design a shirt for Culk or cards for Red Cap Cards. I have a lot of admiration for what people do and I’d love to learn from the best!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://smoceramics.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smoceramics/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahmogden/
Image Credits
Studio Photos by Airyka Rockefeller https://www.instagram.com/airykarock/ Handpainted Signs at booth by 𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐳𝐥𝐞𝐫 https://www.instagram.com/litterbug/
