Josiah Wedgwood Invented Most of Modern Marketing While Selling Pottery to a Queen

Josiah Wedgwood was born into a Staffordshire potting family in 1730 and started his own company in 1759 — at 28, with capital from a relative and a working knowledge of every part of the trade he was about to disrupt. By 1763, his cream-colored earthenware had become so refined that Queen Charlotte ordered a tea service. He capitalized on the order obsessively: his line was rebranded "Queen's Ware" and his commissioned warrant from her made "Potter to Her Majesty" the line on his stationery. The branding was new in 1763. The royal endorsement, illustrated catalogue, and demonstration showroom on Charles Street, Mayfair (which he opened in 1765) are now textbook moves.

The Etruria Works, opened on June 13, 1769, were a genuine industrial novelty. Wedgwood divided the production of a single piece across separate stations — clay preparation, throwing, decorating, glazing, firing — and trained workers in only one task each. The factory operated on bell-rung shifts; he docked wages for tardiness. Output multiplied. By the 1780s nearly 80 percent of Wedgwood's production was being exported, and a single commission for Catherine the Great in 1773 ran to 952 pieces. The Royal Society admitted him in 1783 for his invention of the pyrometer, a device for measuring the high temperatures inside kilns.

Wedgwood was also a committed abolitionist. In 1787 he donated to the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and produced the medallion that became the movement's emblem — a kneeling enslaved African in chains with the words "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" cast around the rim. He distributed thousands free. His daughter Susannah married Robert Darwin; their son was Charles. Wedgwood porcelain pieces from Etruria still come up at auction.