Erie Canal’s Six-Generation Pottery Business Reaches Its End Erie Canal's Six-Generation Pottery Business Reaches Its End

A 122-year-old family business by the Erie canal is nearing its end.
The owner of Smith Housewares has adapted to a modern retail environment but N-C-C News reporter Jiaqi Huang tells us he doesn’t want his children to take over the six-generation pottery business.

John Kuppermann says he will be the end of the line for his family business. He is not sure when, but at some point, he will sell his company’s building. He says he is going to leave the building by the end of this year.

“My son is an archaeologist for the federal government in Illinois and my daughter is studying Animal Behavioral Science in England. We had that conversation back in high school and they both worked here, summers and during school. They enjoyed it. But the future of retailing is so bad, we completely understand.”

Kuppermann says he took over the family business when he graduated from college in 1985.

“This business is one of the county’s oldest family-run business, I think it’s the second or third oldest, 125 years, five generations. To me it’s the only job I’ve ever had, I started working here when I was 12.”

The business took shape in the 1800s when Kuppermann’s great-great-grandfather began selling pottery between Syracuse and Utica with a horse and a wagon. He immigrated from Europe as an itinerant peddler and was given an assigned name Smith.

“His last name was not Smith, it’s Grobnbowsky, it came from Southern Poland. There were large restrictions on what people of the Jewish face could do, they weren’t allowed to own land but being able to be a merchant or a peddler was one of the occupations that Jews were allowed to engage.”

Donald Dutkowsky, a professor of economics at Maxwell school who has witnessed Smith’s business for decades, says most family businesses can’t get past the third generation because they fail to adapt to a changing environment.

“The Syracuse economy is a lot smaller than it used to be, has a lot less commercial outlets than it used to be. Plus greater competition from large-scale sources like BJ’s and Sam’s club. And then you have Amazon coming in. Retailing environment is been tough here.”

To help get through a recession in retailing, Kuppermann opened the Hyman Smith Coffee store next to the Smith Housewares building. He says he offers a selection of Arabica coffee beans to give people something unique more than pottery and he sells about 200 pounds a week. Kuppermann says the number increases to 500 pounds a week in autumn.

“We’ve been roasting coffee for about 30 years. I have had customers that have been buying my coffee for 30 years.”

While Kuppermann comes up with his sideline product of coffee, another pottery manager is doing something similar. Feats of Clay’s store manager Samantha Varga says she makes her pottery store more creative by providing pre-made pottery for people to DIY.

“We have a wide selection of glazes that customers use to design and paint their pieces, the item is left with us for up to a week, so we can fire the item, and the customer comes to pick up the finished glazed piece.”

Professor Dutkowsky says he understands Kupperman’s decision.

“Great place to go, all sorts of different goods, kind of old fashion in its nature, but you can find practically anything you want in it. Charming, exquisite place, but can’t survive in the current economic time, that’s the operative question.”

As a professional ceramist for the last 35 years, Peter Beasecker has been teaching ceramics at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University for a decade. He says Smith is always his stop when he is in Central New York.

“Also I use Smith Restaurant supply as an inspiration to see what was new in the field. What sort of objects they were selling told me about what sort of objects were being used in restaurants and that was something that I can always bring to my students in the classroom.”

Beasecker says Syracuse has a well-developed pottery market. He believes the base of local pottery consumers is growing because Syracuse is a ceramic fine art center in the United States.

“The Everson Museum was the first museum that collected American-made pottery. Both fine art pottery as well as everyday pottery. Now it’s no longer perhaps as the largest holding as it once did, but it’s certainly in the top of three or four institutions in the United States.”

The vast majority of Smith’s pottery comes from overseas. Kuppermann says 75 to 80 percent of everything he sells is imported from China. However, a nearly eight-percent tariff has been charged on consumers since President Trump set tariffs on Chinese imports last September.

“I’m still just buying products that I need from vendors that I’m accustomed to, but the longer that drags out, and if the tariffs go from basically ten percent to the 25 percent, that is a game changer, that’s a big number.”

Professor Dutkowsky says operating a pottery store is still not an easy thing.

“The new owner, he’s got to take a look at the economic landscape and decide how they are going to survive within it, so they could do things differently in terms of prices, in terms of goods they stock and the selection.”

Kuppermann says young people should be careful with going into retailing as a career.

“If I had predicted what have had happened to the business with the Internet back in the 80s, I might choose not to enter the business because as suffered and struggled as a result. But I do enjoy what I do.”

Jiaqi Huang, N-C-C News.