From Washington Post
Small businesses in high-rent cities face disaster. If they go under, urban life will change.
Liz Winchell, the owner of All Fired Up, prepares orders for customers at her store on Connecticut Avenue NW in Cleveland Park. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
Liz Winchell doesn’t own the Cleveland Park building where she runs a 17-year-old pottery studio called All Fired Up. Her landlord said she wouldn’t have to pay her entire rent for May and June. But a full payment is expected later, she said she was told.
Winchell, who runs a second studio in Bethesda, prizes her Cleveland Park location. All Fired Up is right on the Metro’s Red Line, surrounded by apartment and condo buildings full of young professionals, and right across the street from a new Orangetheory fitness studio. The neighborhood is also a magnet for well-off families willing to shell out $26 to paint a cereal bowl or $25 for a wavy side dish. Before the pandemic, the place was crammed with weekend birthday parties. On Thursday nights, friends painted and caught up over their own cheese and wine.
But since the city’s shutdown of nonessential businesses, Winchell’s revenue has tanked. She laid off two full-time and 10 part-time employees and has resorted to delivering pottery-and-paint kits to people’s homes.
She’s only netting a fraction of her normal revenue — 10 percent, she estimates. She recently received two Paycheck Protection Program loans through the Small Business Administration for the D.C. and Bethesda studios. But the terms require that 75 percent of the funds go toward paying staff, she said, and that she keep workers on her payroll for eight weeks if she wants the loans forgiven.
Most of her employees are fearful about working in the studio’s somewhat tight space, she said. And she really needs the money for rent, which costs about $5,000 a month in Cleveland Park.
“Rent. That’s what I go to bed at night thinking about and what I wake up thinking about,” she said. Her landlord, she said, has been polite, and she respects his position. “But the undertone is, ‘You’re you, I’m me, and I’ll cut this down a little bit, but money is owed.’ ”
Winter SCORES at Johnson Middle School: Pottery making
From Bethesda Magazine
Hometown: A Teacher After All
For Liz Winchell, owning a pottery studio is about more than creating ceramics
When she was in college, Liz Winchell wanted to be a special education teacher. But she has dyslexia, a learning disability that impairs her capacity to read and write, and her professors at New England College in New Hampshire were brutally candid.
“It didn’t work out,” she says. “I did my student teaching and my kids in the fourth grade had a better reading level than I did. So I failed my student teaching. They said, ‘You’re not going to be a teacher.’ ”
They were wrong.
Today, at 42, Winchell runs All Fired Up, a studio on Elm Street in the center of Bethesda where folks can walk through the door, paint a piece of pottery, and go home later with a work of art. The disability that plagued her in college now gives her a keen insight into how to reach customers on their own terms.
From Washingtonian
7 Romantic Things to Do With Your Sweetheart in Washington
You can go to dinner and a movie any night. Why not woo with something more off the beaten path?
By Erin Williams
You can spend any day of the year having dinner and a movie, but it’s the creative ideas that can make this Valentine’s Day one to remember. We rounded up some of our favorite spots to visit to commemorate this February 14.
Build Something Lasting Together
From The Montgomery County Sentinel
Get All Fired Up This Weekend
By Jacqueline Ruttimann
Special to the Sentinel
Standing over a kiln, Liz Winchell, owner of the Bethesda and Cleveland Park pottery studios All Fired Up, carefully loads her customer’s creations so as not to allow them to touch or fall on each other.
“It’s kind of like a puzzle,” Winchell said when describing the process. She uses, similar words about why she started her business, becoming first a manager at the Cleveland Park studio after only several months of working there in 2001 and then the owner of the two pottery studios last year. “It just agreed with me. It’s just the right amount of interaction with people and the creative process. It’s a good balance.”
Employment Opportunities
At All Fired Up, we’re always looking for great people to come and work with us. If you are a people person, personally motivated and love creativity and kids, then apply here. We hope to see you soon at All Fired Up!
In The Community
We support our local schools and can help you in a variety of ways!
AUCTIONS
We will donate a $25 gift certificate. We give a 15% discount off pottery going towards a class project for school auctions. We love to help you with ideas and planning for your class projects. Tiled mirror projects are very popular among school auctions. They are easy to put together and look fabulous.
ADVERTISING
We advertise in school directories, newspapers and yearbooks. If you would like to discuss how we can help, please call Liz at the Bethesda Studio.
Some of the Schools we have Supported in the Past
- Bethesda Elementary School
- Chevy Chase Elementary School
- North Chevy Chase Elementary School
- Walt Whitman High School
- Bethesda Community School
- Jewish Primary Day
- The Primary Day School
- Washington Episcopal School
- Chevy Chase Children’s Center
- Ivymount School
- Sidwell Friends
- Oneness Preschool
- Washington International School
- St. James Children’s School
- St. Patrick’s School
- Holy Redeemer School
- Keen Fest School
- NCRC
- National Cathedral School
- Friends of Wells/Robertson House, Inc.
- Norwood School
- Bethesda – Chevy Chase High School
Off-Site and/or Large Community-Based Projects
- National Institutes of Health: specialized art programs for youth
- Latin American Youth Center
- Bar Mitzvahs/Bat Mitzvahs: 200 attendees enjoyed this special day of painting