The Thursday Show: East Fork's Alex Matisse on rebuilding after Helene. Plus: Will a wave of silicosis lawsuits upend the engineered stone industry?

25:44And I feel like maybe we all caught a case of the color drench when the Brits came over. Is that a plausible excuse? Well, and I think maybe, you know, maybe some of the British paint companies like Farrow and Ball and Little Green, you know, maybe they've got some really good press people and they're getting these stories out there. That wouldn't surprise me at all. They're awfully good at naming the colors, as we talked about recently. And I think they're creating a lot of excitement around this. The question is, Fred, I mean, I really want to know, how do you feel about color drenching? Do you like the whole concept?

26:17Do you look at it and say, oh, my gosh, I want to do that myself? Do you think it's a timeless idea, Fred? I don't know. Well, no, is I think the correct answer. I do think that color drenching is like, it's one of those, one of these little micro, I I wouldn't call it a micro trend exactly, but it's one of these things that I think it's almost purpose built for social media. It just pops on Instagram. It's also something that people say over and over again that repainting your room is the quickest, cheapest, and most efficient way to refresh it. And so it's something that an influencer who doesn't have a huge budget can do.

26:56So it's almost tailor-made for our social media moment. Whether it actually works in a real home that you live in. I don't know. I mean, I'd be curious to hear from designers. I feel like this is something a little bit more for the editorial social media world than it is for, like, the everyday client. But I don't know. What do you think, Dennis? Got any drenched rooms in your house? Or double drenched, for that matter? Well, exactly. I mean, the double drenching really caught my attention. Wait, if you love that color for everything, just try and work in a similar color and see what that does.

27:30I mean, I completely agree, and I really would love to hear from designers out there what they make of this whole trend and whether or not they think this whole thing is just hilarious or ridiculous. Or as it pointed out in several of the articles, maybe if you don't have a great bone structure in a room, if you didn't have a lot of great old moldings or something, that this can kind of punch up the room and make it a lot more more personal and warm. I get that. I think it could be sort of fun. I don't know about talking the lovely Mrs. Scully into color drenching if I can get her on board, but I think it might be fun to try it in a space and see.

28:11But again, I think, is it going to last the test of time? Or are we going to look back at, oh yeah, that 24 moment when everyone was color drenching? Yeah, it totally looks like that. When everyone was filling up a fire hose with pharaoh and ball paint and just going to town in their room. I think what this is really doing is giving me an idea for my design Halloween costume. I'll just do like blue man group style, blue paints top to bottom. I will come as a color drenched room. I like it. Okay. I look forward to seeing pictures of that. All right. That's it for the news, but there's plenty more to check out on businessofhome.com, including a roundup of the biggest new hires in the industry and advice from Sean Lowe about taking on smaller projects during a slowdown.

28:54We'll be back in a minute, but first, a quick break.

29:02We're taking a quick break from the show to remind you about Isla Porter. Making space for more isn't always about square footage, ceiling height, or physical constraints. Rather, it's about opening up the possibilities of what designers can accomplish when their schedule allows for more creativity and innovation. Isla Porter's collection of bespoke cabinetry and AI-powered technology is here to improve your kitchen design process. Isla Porter takes care of the technical details and craftsmanship, from providing elevations and 3D renderings to offering a wide array of door styles and finishes, all made with the highest quality materials, giving you more time and variety to create stunning spaces for your clients.

29:50See how Isla Porter is designing differently. Follow along on Instagram at the Isla Porter. That's at T-H-E-I-S-L-A-P-O-R-T-E-R. We're taking a quick break from the show to remind you about Lalloy, who recently introduced Love Lalloy, a commitment to doing good for their community, industry, and environment. Through this initiative, Lalloy has recently worked in India to promote female education, donate a thousand tree saplings, and provide free eye exams and glasses to hundreds of craftspeople. Learn more at lalloyrugs.com. That's L-O-L-O-I rugs dot com. And follow them on Instagram at Lalloy Rugs.

30:45and we're back i'm joined now by the ceo of east fork alex matisse alex it is such a relief to see you and i'm so glad to get to talk to you it's good to be here good to see your face again i wanted to introduce reintroduce in in some cases east fork to people uh and tell a little bit of your story before we dive into everything. Sure. East Fork is part manufacturer, part beloved brand of dinnerware, primarily for the kitchen, dining, kind of adjacent. I started the company in 2010. My now wife, Connie, was there from the very beginning. And then another friend, John, who is also sort of a classically trained potter joined.

31:34And 2015, we saw pottery having this kind of moment in the sun again. Now we have two factories in Asheville, North Carolina, and about 110 employees or so. And that's East Fork in a nutshell. Hurricane Helene, you start to hear this hurricane is coming in the days before it arrives. What were you thinking? How were you preparing? What did you imagine? We imagined that there would be some flooding, that the river would get high. I think people were preparing for some flooding. We canceled work on Thursday. There was a few of us that came in to button things up and then canceled work on Friday.

32:20But nobody here was expecting this. Nobody in the mountains thought that they would be touched this profoundly by a natural disaster. Asheville was considered kind of a climate haven. So it's sobering for everyone here and should be sobering for others that live in places where they think they're kind of immune potentially to climate change because it is not the case. It sounds like everyone on your team has been accounted for, everyone safe at this point. Tell me what's going on. We were incredibly fortunate. Everyone on our team was safe. Communications were blacked out. So just finding people communicating was a real challenge, but we did manage to track down on everyone.

33:13We were safe. And then we went into response mode. I'm in the factory, so you may hear. We're just starting to get things spooled back up. So there's a forklift backing up. You might hear that. East Fork was so amazingly fortunate. Our two main production facilities were well out of floodplain. Well, one of them 10 feet above. The other sits up on a hill. So I feel beyond grateful and fortunate that our main facilities were not impacted. We had one small facility that was, but not a major impact to our manufacturing. And just as a company, we can keep going when so many companies in Asheville right now and in the region are shut down.

34:02Either they've lost a facility or there is no water in the city of Asheville. So restaurants cannot open. There's obviously no tourists. People are getting furloughed left and right. I mean, hotels are closed. Asheville is a tourist destination, so it's not a good scene for folks. And that's not even talking about the actual physical devastation caused by this and the loss of life and the people's homes that are gone. Just the scale of the devastation and how far it reached into all the nooks and crannies of these mountains is you can't fathom it even if you live here. You mentioned earlier it was thought previously to be a climate haven.

34:56What did happen? The river rose up clearly, but tell me what caused such devastation. Tell me a little bit about when you realized the severity of it all. There was a series of things. One, we had a rain event leading up to it. So before Helene even hit, we had some very heavy rains. That happened kind of on Thursday. And then when Helene hit, it was just more water. So the first thing I noticed when I got out of our house and we live out in the country and we live next to a small river, I could see that the road across from us was gone. That was the very first thing I saw. And I knew immediately that this was something really bad was happening.

35:42I walked up to our road, began to walk down it. And the trees were down everywhere. and I had a chainsaw and started sawing my way down the road and got to the point where I could then see the river and my neighbor's house was completely off its foundation, sort of crumpled up in a ball and knew at that point, that's when the sort of panic, the adrenaline, the reality of the situation was clear. That was early in the morning on Friday. So in Asheville, people were watching the River Arts District to go under much later in the day. So the devastation just kept rolling and rolling and rolling, putting entire towns, Marshall, underwater, hot springs.

36:28I mean, Swannanoa sustained just a tremendous amount of impact. And they're still, you know, the cadaver dogs are here and they are still discovering people. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, as you were saying earlier, Asheville, a big tourist area, also a big art and creative people community and a lot of people. I can't remember what originally brought you to Asheville and what made you want to set up shop there. I worked for a potter that lived outside of Asheville named Matt Jones. And I worked for him for two years and in that time made some connections and some friends. And then I left for a year, worked for another potter.

37:12When I came back, I chose Asheville as the spot. It was kind of a cool, groovy little spot to set up in. And that's how I landed here. when i when we had connie on the show not too long ago she was bemoaning the fact that ashville had become so popular and such a destination that that in a way the community had become a little overwhelmed by it all that so many people were coming and during covid so many people moved there it it sounded like and so the the community was was feeling very stretched at the at the time? The community was stretched. The community is still stretched, and now we're stretched even more.

37:53Housing prices kept on rising. Wages stayed relatively stagnant. The post-COVID recession kind of hit in spring of 2022. Tourists kept visiting. The infrastructure, particularly the water infrastructure, could not really keep up. And two years ago, we had an issue with the water infrastructure. And now obviously there's a much larger issue. So no, Asheville has been a, it's really sort of caught between a whole number of challenges right now, obviously that the impact is gonna, there's gonna be a long tail to this. Yeah. Yeah. And I wanna talk about that and the lengthy rebuilding process. I'm wondering specifically for you in the short term, in the longer term, what the impact has been.

38:52It's great that you're already able to be back in the factory and lights on, but it sounds like there's still a lot of issues. Yeah. I mean, for us, again, we're so fortunate. We have these customers that really show up when we call on them. We kind of followed the early COVID playbook, said, here's what's happening. Here's how you can support us. Here's how we can keep payroll going. I think one of the defining things of East Fork is this kind of people first approach. We've kept payroll going sort of completely uninterrupted. It will go uninterrupted until the 21st of October. And then folks that really cannot return, there'll be some impact there.

39:37But our first instinct is always how do How do we keep people whole for as long as we can? And that means getting back to work as fast as we can. And again, we're in a fortunate position. We've got electricity at one facility. We've got internet. We have water as of this morning, I think. It's hard to say if this water will stay. But at the moment, we have water here, not at the other facility. We're planning to drop a large tank there, plummet into the building, get that one going. but making pottery is our engine and that's what we need to to restart as fast as we can yeah as you say you reached out to your community they were they were very responsive you you announced a big seconds sale and uh and and raised funds for some some local charities that uh that you think are doing good work on the on the ground tell me a little bit about how that went for you yeah that again is something that we've we have done for a long long time we have a community partnership program.

40:38We pick every quarter an organization within the communities that we live. And usually we sort of leverage our customers to support that organization and we raise money for them. And they're small organizations. So it's a meaningful check that ends up being given to them. For this one, we had the ability to make an in-cart donation to our community partners, the three that we had worked with so far this year, that were doing work in immediate response to this. So you could make an in-cart donation. 50 % of customers made an in-cart donation. And then we were also donating 5 % of proceeds to those community partners.

41:21So we ended up raising, I don't know,$150 ,000 at this point, split across these orgs. And we'll continue that 5 % through the end of the year because it's going to be needed long after this leaves the news cycle, which of course it will. You mentioned about people coming back and I don't imagine for a company like yours, a lot of people can work remotely. I noticed your social media person relocated to Mississippi to make sure that she'd be okay and she can do what she needs to do remotely, but I imagine most of your team needs to be there. You tell me. Yeah. I mean, a big portion of the team that's working on the floor is here.

42:06Obviously, it needs to be here. But we have remote team members. We have folks in Atlanta. We have people in Portland, Oregon, and all over the place. So the sales, marketing side of things, we certainly have more remote people. And they've really kept the wheels turning while the factory's been down. So all of those folks that had connectivity that could work, they've been putting in long hours to keep that going. We're also working on our store in Brooklyn. So that continues with a hopeful opening date of mid-November. So all of these things, we're trying to keep all of the wheels moving. Good.

42:52I'm so glad that you mentioned that. And I'm thrilled to hear that that is still on track, Alex, because of course, I was wondering the impact on your plans. And I know this Brooklyn location, which many people are already so excited about, and has been on the calendar for a long time, I was worried that some of your initiatives might be scaled back or postponed a bit. But it sounds like you're moving forward. Yeah, no, we're moving forward. We will get the doors open. The opening party, maybe we're not going to have the big, huge floral displays that we thought we were, but it is going to be a celebration of East Fork and of our resilience and of moving through this.

43:40So with again, sales of all proceeds, not just online, going to support these relief efforts down here. Let's talk about the rebuilding process for the whole community there. So one of the things that we always learn in these horrible situations is how few people have flood insurance because of the cost. I think it was one or two percent of the population of that. I don't know if you had flood insurance. I don't know what insurance is going to be able to do in this case. And what are you both imagining and being told about what rebuilding efforts will look like? I don't know one person that had flood insurance.

44:27So that's kind of out of the picture. Business interruption insurance. I think there's also something that says if it's because of something outside of the Even our business interruption insurance, we are questioning whether that will come through. But yes, no, a lot of people really, they lost everything. There's SBA disaster relief loans that are going to be available. There's some bridge financing that's been available to the smaller businesses, which are really the ones that are most vulnerable from just a business side of things. you have this kind of one-two punch of these small businesses, craft businesses, small CPG, whatnot.

45:13Everybody's been struggling in the reset, this kind of COVID reset, right? You've been talking about it on your show in the home space for a long time. So people were already struggling. And then you have this. and so folks aren't sitting on super solid foundations. A lot of them, we weren't sitting on a super solid foundation before this happened. So hence the need to bring in as much of that cash as possible. It's been a real push. So general rebuilding, they're moving really fast. Everybody I think gets online and especially people that don't live here and they have a disaster in the age of social media and have an opinion of who's showing up and who's not, I can only speak to my own experience, which is obviously all of these communities have come together overnight and really supported themselves.

46:09In our small community, we had all sorts of different folks in. We had a search and recovery team from Kannapolis in. We had Army Corps of Engineers. And I mean, it's just there's been helicopters putting up power poles. They've restored a tremendous amount of power, the linemen from all over the East Coast that are here working day in and day out. So there's a huge amount happening. Of course, there could be more. Of course, certain things could be done in a better way. But when something of this scale happens, there's no perfect response. There's not. I try to proceed with a lot of grace and gratitude through it.

46:57You alluded earlier, Alex, to listen, the big lesson out of all of this is that clearly climate change is coming for us all in one way or another. And I don't honestly know what to do about that or how we better prepare ourselves for it. What are your thoughts? Truth is, and we're already seeing it, is that it's impacting certain people before it impacts others. mostly the most disadvantaged of us, the people with the most privilege, the most, they can kind of insulate and protect themselves. So it's happening. We're in the midst of it. We're seeing it unfold sort of, I wouldn't even say in slow motion anymore.

47:47And I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm sort of a cynic and I own a pottery company and we fire big kilns and we contribute to it. We all contribute to it. We all fly around at every whim. Living for a few days without power, without water, you can see. You do see. I mean, you can survive. But it really requires people to change their habits, to change the way they're living their lives. I mean, this is something Connie, my wife, is really passionate about. And I think she's really sort of trying to sort of fight for that. but will people really make a change to how they're living and then the corporations will the corporations make these make a change that you know that i have much less um faith in and and even the green you know yeah the uh renewable stuff electric cars battery cars like no we just need to drive less like that's what needs to happen people need to drive less yeah as you say It's so hard to know what to do and what habits need to change.

48:54And as you suggest, the changes are so massive and whether corporate America will get on board is yet to be determined. But this was certainly a huge wake-up call for the whole country and I hope the whole world about the seriousness of all of this. So many people – we were talking earlier about Asheville just becoming such a tourist destination. So many people love Asheville, just feel heartbroken over everything that they've seen. So many people, even in our close community, have recently moved to Asheville and then wanted to be part of it. And I want to believe that Asheville is going to rebuild and be better than ever.

49:41But as you were saying earlier, it's a long tail. It's a long process. Yeah, it's a long tail. It's a long process. There's a lot of us here that are dug in that aren't going anywhere. I'm sure that there will be people that move, but it's a crucible moment. It's going to melt everything down and it's going to reform it and something new is going to come out of it. Hopefully something better, but it will come back and it's going to take some time. The water, I mean, the infrastructure is one thing, but just getting the water going, there's no timeline for when water will be running through the city.

50:13They recently pulled every restaurant permit in the city of Asheville, which is wild because people were operating and it wasn't safe and clean. So nobody's allowed to operate. And they have to then apply, I think, for sort of an emergency permit. And they have to have water that's brought in. But in moments like this, I feel very fortunate to live in the country, to drive 45 minutes to work every day, which I do. Yeah. One of the things I admire about you in addition to all that you've built and done is that I feel like you're always working on yourself and you're always trying to improve yourself.

50:58And you and I have talked in the past about working on your leadership and really wanting to be the best leader possible for your team and for your community. And suddenly, all of this is thrust upon you, an enormous test of those leadership skills. And I wonder how you're feeling and how you're doing with all of that. Leading up to this, I've actually felt, I mean, work's been hard. We've been moving through hard moments. I've felt like that sort of the hubris of youth is gone. Like when we started the company and we had some very kind of lofty goals and ambitions, now we've sort of operated enough to see the reality of some of these things, to see just how hard it really is.

51:52You know, we sort of started in 2008 and we rode the Instagram kind of algorithm right up with Connie leading the way there and then made it through early day COVID and then rode that COVID wave for that short little period. And now we see, you know, now we've been sort of tested over and over and again. And so I've really felt, I've called it the sort of like this kind of nadir of me feeling like, oh, I do not have all of the answers. I have surrounded myself with people that I admire and respect, like Eric from Fireclay and Sarah Frisch, formerly Schoolhouse, two leaders who I consider sort of mentors of mine.

52:44and yeah, I think I'll come out of this a better leader and I've been showing up for the team and that's all that you can do and no, it's certainly, it's funny and I feel actually the things that I was stressed about leading up to this are sort of kind of pale in comparison and I almost, my stress levels have in some way gone down because of the perspective shift, I think. It's going to be a long road back. People want to know how they can help, how they can contribute. There are so many ways that you can contribute, the organizations that we highlight, but so many other great organizations here doing work.

53:26And also, if you care about beautiful things, if you care about the people that make them, supporting those makers that are here, those artists, those designers. A friend of mine just started, I'll plug his website, brands of wnc.com which is a collection of of brands that all have been impacted by this and uh we're just one of of many and and many of those brands were impacted far greater than we were so yeah just uh thinking about yeah where where are you spending your money like maybe spend your money on some of these beautiful southern southern brands especially this holiday Absolutely. And we, and we very much want to direct people to, to do that.

54:09And so many people have reached out wondering how best to, to help. And, and so much of the messaging I think is supporting these local brands. And so I'm glad you mentioned that site. And I, I would encourage people to, to go on your social media and, and others that are, that are local there to, to, to guide them to places where they can make a meaningful difference. And then be very patient about getting your order delivered. Okay. That's the other thing. Be very patient. Be very patient. We've got 10 ,000 orders and we're going to get all of our pack stations humming, but yes, it's going to take a little time.

54:44Alex, I'm so pleased to get to see you and so glad to get to talk to you. And please send my very best to Connie and your family. And I'm just so glad you're okay. Yeah. It's great to talk with you. As always, thank you so much for reaching out and giving us a platform to share what's happening down here.

55:06We're getting to the end of the show here, but before we go, we'd like to take a second to highlight anything going on in the industry that might have caught our eye. Fred, what caught your eye? A collaboration that will turn around a struggling furniture industry. Hooker has unveiled a licensing deal with Margaritaville, the brand started by Jimmy Buffett, of course, that exemplifies his Parrothead lifestyle. R.I.P. to the great man. But I don't know. I just thought this was just, I mean, anything, anything that has the word Margaritaville in it, I'm going to be interested in. So I thought that was funny.

55:36I can't, can't wait to see what that looks like. on a more serious note I saw this story just a minute ago actually that Home Depot is having a program now where they're requiring their executive teams to work an 8 hour shift in their retail stores on a somewhat regular basis which I think is there's a quality of stunt to it like a undercover boss vibe to it but I do really think that like you just learn so much getting out there and doing different roles within a business I can't tell you how many times people in this industry have talked about how meaningful it is to work a day on the phones or, you know, to get out there into the factory.

56:14So I thought that was, you know, if it is real and not just a publicity stunt, I thought that was really cool. Did you see that one? I did. I saw that announcement from Home Depot and I agree. I think it's great in Home Depot's case, the founders used to talk about they wanted everyone to put on the orange apron and work the floor. And that was really important in the early days of Home Depot. And I think there's a feeling among many that they need some executives visiting the stores because I think many complain that the stores feel a little unattended. And so I think people can learn a lot and also get a true sense of what's happening on the sales floor.

56:51So I salute them in that effort. So what caught your eye this week, Dennis? So recently we had Joe Motorico on the show, and he was talking at the time about his upcoming exhibition that is going to be opening October 10th at the Wexler Gallery in Philadelphia. I sadly will not be there for the opening, but I am eager to come. The show is called Juxtaposed, and it's running through December 20th. So people who are near the Philadelphia area definitely want to go and see a collection of Jomo's furniture, also his fun wallpaper that I'm encouraging him to launch a lot more of. And he's got some great pieces and it's a really fun and interesting show.

57:34He shared with me some of the setup of it and I'm a big fan of his and I'm really excited. I know this is a big deal for him. Yeah, it looks cool. I was seeing it come together on social media. So I'm looking forward to seeing some pictures from it. Absolutely. I hope I get down to Philadelphia soon. Good luck to you, Jomo. All right, that's all the time we have today. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to keep up with the latest news, browse job listings, or take a workshop, visit us online at businessofhome.com. If you want to get in touch with the show, write to us at podcast at businessofhome.com.

58:07This episode was produced by Fred Nikolaus and Caroline Burke and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Have a great weekend, and we'll be back with you on Monday.