Clay Coyote

Our business is a pottery studio and art gallery in rural Minnesota. We make about 7,000 pots a year with a team of potters who love to cook and they love art, and it's kind of a small family business that also features the artwork of about 25 other artists from across the United States. My name is Morgan Baum, and I'm the CEO and owner of the Clay Coyote in Hutchinson, Minnesota. In 2020, when the pandemic first began, we had to shut down and all of our potters. You know, pottery is not a business that you can do remotely very easily. So our potters had to go home, and we were able to continue our online work because we had inventory in stock, but all of our potters had to go home for three months. The biggest pivot we made in 2020 was to move our business from our rural location into downtown Hutchinson. It helped us reach a new audience, doubled our studio space. It made it easier for us to do shipping to all of our customers nationwide. And it gave the potters more room, which was really helpful when we needed to socially distance. We used almost every single resource available to us. The ppp, the Eidl, the Eidl advance, the Eidl, lo, the targeted advances, all of the resources from our local SBA partner. We just tapped into everything possible, and we also got a lot of support, just emotional support from our SBA partners as we were going through the pandemic. But we all banded together, and that's the reason we're here today. When Covid hit In March of 2020, we heard from our businesses immediately, and we were reaching out to let them know that we were there for them, and we would provide resources and tools to help them get through the unknown forever, how long it was going to last. A lot of companies right now are struggling with hiring workers, and we're a family visitor. So when we were told we had to close down and everybody had to go home, it was really important to me that we paid everybody, even though they couldn't come to work. As a SBO microlender, we have a lot of loan clients, and we work with them, providing the capital, resources, providing the technical assistance, the tools and resources. But we also become their friends and their customers. And here at Clay Coyote, they provide functional art. But it's more than that. It's a feel. The pieces that I have purchased from Clay Coyote are now friends and my cupboard with a story. During the pandemic, one of the things we did was host online cooking classes to showcase how our pots can be put into action. Everybody was at home. So we wanted to give people recipes where they could travel the world from the comfort of their kitchen. You know, they say cooking's an art. We make art. You can cook with. The SBA helped us stay in business in the pandemic. In fact, I believe that without their support, we wouldn't be here today. Sam.