Rainy Bray & Ella Watson | Episode 1216

Ella Watson and Rainy Bray set out on a mission to make glazes more accessible… Founded by studio owner Rainy and glaze scientist Ella, Five Glaze combines creative vision with scientific precision to deliver dry batch glaze systems that make custom color development accessible, affordable, and exciting for potters at every level.

Clay Call

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Rainy Bray

When somebody has a great idea, not all great ideas are worth chasing down. So how did you know that starting a new glaze company was was something that was worth chasing down?

Rainy: So I think this comes down to some personality traits that I think both of us have. I was 19 when I started my studio, so I just see no danger. I jump off the “cliff”, if that makes sense. And I’m like, What’s the worst that could happen? We don’t sell any glaze, and we’d add no overhead, so let’s do it and we’ll see how it goes. And that was kind of my philosophy going into having a studio. We live in a booming town, but it has been a small town, and so, like, it was just like, see, you need fill a need go for it.

Ella Watson

Ella: I feel, and I’ve said this to Rainy a lot, that five glaze, like, kind of picked us. It felt like it had to happen. I think that is kind of true about a lot of ideas, is they pick you.

Rainy Watson

I’ve said it before that there’s there’s no such thing as million dollar ideas. There’s only such thing as million dollar actions. So What actions did you take to be able to know that this was not only something worth pursuing, but then the actions to actually get it up and going?

Rainy: Honestly, it’s just moving forward. I don’t think too much. Just keep going. I don’t know the actions. That’s a really hard question for me. I just am a person of action. So I’m like. You just do it right?

Ella Watson

Ella: I was driving to Menards, and my kind of mom figure in Northwest Arkansas said, Why not? Rainey and you work like magic, so go for it! And our partnership is the heart of our business.

Rainy Bray

Have you given yourselves like a time frame and said we’re going to give this a go for an X amount of time, and if it doesn’t do what we need to do, we’re going to pull the plug?

Rainy: We have already done this and we’ve already hit that minimum. We’ve already hit those milestones that we set really early on. We’ve already surpassed our year goal. So we have another five year goal that we’re like, is kind of the tipping point of like, do we scale it so we’ll see that. We’ll see when we hit that milestone.

Ella Watson

Ella: We went in really strategically. We have an operating agreement that we take really seriously, and our now that we know it works, I don’t think there’s really an end. I want to do this for all time. I don’t want to start another business like this. Is the business?

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