During a typical day at Jono Pandolfi's Union City, New Jersey, pottery studio, he and his 30-person team unload over a thousand pieces out of their 13 kilns, and ship the plates, bowls and mugs to restaurants and home chefs around the world.

The multitextured dinnerware is sold to and used in hundreds of restaurants and FX's TV series "The Bear." Similar largescale collaborations pushed the company into profitability in 2012, but when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down restaurants, Jono Pandolfi Designs expanded its direct-to-consumer offerings, he says.

It was a lucrative move: Now, direct-to-consumer sales represent nearly half of the business's revenue. At the end of December, the company projected it would bring in over $6.6 million in 2024, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

"I think it's safe to say that it's pretty hard for a ceramic artist or someone who studied clay to build a business that's bringing in over $6 million per year," says Pandolfi, 48. "I feel like I'm living the dream of a ceramic artist."

Customers can now buy Pandolfi's products — like four-piece settings, starting at $172 on its website — for themselves. The studio charges $51 for an 8-inch pasta bowl, which is made from about $1 worth of clay, but far more in labor expenses, says Pandolfi, who declined to share the company's overall profit margins.

While labor remains the business's biggest expense, firing and glazing the bowls also requires a financial investment. Once the studio started taking on high profile clients, like Anthropologie and Crate & Barrel, it needed more kilns to keep up with the demand. The business has taken out three loans, each between $100,000 and $200,000, starting in 2016, Pandolfi says.

"The kilns pay for themselves, really," Pandolfi adds. "We've built this business entirely on our own cash flow." For instance, the studio's large gas kiln can fire about 500 dinner plates a night, which results in about $18,000 in potential revenue.

But growing the business production capacity and revenue took decades. Pandolfi launched the company as a side hustle and personal creative outlet in 2004, while he taught ceramics and worked for larger manufacturers to cover bills, he says. When he lost his manufacturing job six years later, he took it as a sign to grow his company full-time, about 60 hours per week.

The turning point for his company came in 2012, when the NoMad Hotel opened in New York and ordered over 6,000 pieces in a $100,000 deal, Pandolfi says. After the NoMad Hotel project, he hired his first full-time employee and started buying more equipment, he adds. The hotel has since closed.

Building the business slowly, gradually growing its production, output and margins, remains Pandolfi's biggest goal, he says. The company's shift to a direct-to-consumer strategy is, so far, supporting that vision: It brought in almost $5.2 million in 2023, and has more than tripled its revenue since 2020.

"It's always been incredibly important to me ... from day one, has been to build this [company] in a bulletproof way, in a long lasting way," he says. "I think the goal now is to continue to capture the organic demand that's there for us and to [maintain that] sustainable growth for the next several years ... keeping the character of this place the same."

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