Beach Pottery Etc. was one of many Fort Myers Beach businesses impacted by Hurricane Ian.
Alanna Osborne, the owner of Beach Pottery Etc., has lived in the neighborhood behind the store for over 11 years and purchased the store in April of 2019, two years after Hurricane Irma.
When Irma hit, she packed up her belongings, evacuated, and returned to find minor damage.
“We were told the same things like ‘there's going to be 16 feet of surge,’ ‘this could be a big one’ and all of that,” Osborne said. “Nothing really happened, we had some wind damage, lost our pool cage but no surge. So, this time around, we're like ‘yeah, been there, done that with the whole Irma thing.’”
She expected the same this time around, that was before she saw Ian’s trajectory heading towards the beach. Her home and shop containing between 12,000 and 15,000 pots were right in Ian’s path.
“It’s supposed to hit Tampa, so we'll just kind of wait and see and then it just turned and happened faster than was anticipated so we didn't do anything, we were trapped in our house,” Osborne said.
She was able to lay down some of her pottery in front of the shop in hopes it wouldn’t blow or roll into the street. She knew she wouldn’t be able to protect the acre of pottery behind her store.
“We just left it, we couldn't do really anything,” Osborne said. “There's so much product outside that we just kind of crossed our fingers basically. And then we thought ‘okay, we might get some water in the store.’”
The store and her home have been standing since the 70s and hadn’t had a drop of water inside prior to Ian. Then Ian's 12-foot storm surge entered her home and store.
She lost two outbuildings, restaurant equipment for the Pelican's Perch Cafe that was inside the store, fencing, and 10% of her merchandise. A tree had toppled over in the back and a boat, Betti Too, had made its way to the front of her store.
Through all the damage, she now jokes that some of her pottery is “cat 5 proof,” since Ian sustained maximum winds of 155 mph, 2 mph from becoming a category 5 hurricane.
She knew in order to save her store, it had to be stripped to its studs. She didn’t have flood insurance but luckily had a support system to help her rebuild.
“Nothing was covered. So yeah, it was a hard hit for sure,” Osborne said.
She almost lost hope. That’s when people on the island that were rebuilding started to stop by and ask to purchase merchandise.
"Nobody was really supposed to be down in our area, I'm talking the first couple of weeks. So, there were barricades, you had to show identification and if you were living down here or had worked down here, those were the only reasons they were supposed to let you in at the roadblocks,” Osborne said.
Utility workers, insurance adjusters, journalists, FEMA employees and XFINITY employees were her first customers after the hurricane.
"People that were here from out of town wanted to bring something home for their wife,” Osborne said. “They were here contracted out here from other parts of the country.”
Without power, she only accepted cash or checks and then she was able to receive money over Venmo and Zelle. Now she has electricity and can receive cards again.
“That's really all it was the first couple weeks. So it wasn't big sales, but it was trickling in and so we started to realize that there is another world outside of our little world,” Osborne said. “It took us a couple of weeks to really grasp that the rest of Fort Myers was actually okay and that we would probably be able to bounce back."
She was still worried about her staff members, as she is their sole source of income.
"I was trying to keep my staff employed and that was a big worry initially, it's a huge responsibility as an owner to keep people employed. That was a big worry for them, of course, so there was lots of work to be done,” Osborne said. “Initially I thought, ‘okay, this is it, business is done. Nobody's gonna want to buy anything, everything's gone and destroyed, people's lives are affected.’”
She started a GoFundMe to support her staff and raised $8,332 from 39 donors.
“It's hard to staff just because of where we're located, by beach town, it's just hard to get good staff and people come and go, so I don't want to lose them,” Osborne said. “I'm sure they could have found jobs somewhere else, but you don't want to not be able to employ them and then they leave and then you're ready to start back up again and now you don't have employees, so it's really important for me to keep them on staff and make sure that they were taken care of.”
The GoFundMe donations allowed her to pay her staff for three months without worrying about sales.
“We were bleeding money so that was that was really crucial, that really allowed me to focus on the clean up and rebuilding and it was just one less thing for me to worry about,” Osborne said.
Now six months later, you would never know the destruction that occurred. She says that although the cafe is closed, all that’s left to do is trim work and paint touch ups.
Her pottery is primarily shipped in from Vietnam and Mexico and ranges from $4 pieces that fit in your hand to heavy, larger pieces that are worth hundreds of dollars.
The front and back of her story are filled with larger pottery. Small pottery items are inside the store, along with clothing and jewelry. There’s also a room filled with talavera pottery, a type of brightly-colored, handmade and hand-painted ceramics from Mexico or Spain, displayed on the walls and on shelves.
Osborne works with other local businesses and advocates for women supporting women.
She features works from Michelle McCarthy, owner of Shells Pottery in Port Charlotte, inside Beach Pottery Etc. McCarthy primarily sells work through her Etsy shop and has sold 6,746 pottery pieces online.
“She hand throws all of her ceramic pieces,” Osborne said. “She does custom pieces for us.”
She also works with Stephanie from the Florida Sea Turtle Company to display their bracelets. With every purchase of a bracelet, net proceeds are donated to animal conservation centers to raise awareness of the endangerment of sea turtles.
Lovers of the store have been talking about the store’s rebuilding process in Facebook groups. The group “I love Fort Myers Beach, Florida” has 140,600 members.
Debi Szekely shared one of Osborne’s posts and said, “No better purchase,” about Osborne’s pottery. Just a few days later, the post has received 607 likes, 36 comments and 24 shares.
“Best pots you can find anywhere,” Micki Riecke of Cape Coral said. “Our two big pots were [too] large to bring inside during the hurricane and they survived Ian.”
Many shared their fond memories at the store and their beloved items. Some shared that they were sad that their pottery was lost in the storm.
Erika Hill, 23, of Fort Myers, began working at Beach Pottery Etc. just two weeks ago. Hill attends Everglades University and is studying alternative medicine. She lives near the pottery shop.
“I've driven past it my whole life,” Hill said. “The owner before Alanna, she had similar things, I've always driven past it going to the beach.”
She lost her job at a health care center after Ian. She wanted a change and decided to reach out to Osborne for a job. She likes being able to be outside in the sun while getting a workout in at the same time. She helps move pots upwards of a few hundred pounds with the help of other workers, dollies and hand trucks.
"I'm actually learning a lot as I'm helping people. I wasn't too familiar with pottery before this, but it's interesting,” Hill said. “It's definitely sturdier than most of the stuff that you can get here in the U.S., we just don't make that type of clay.”
She sees locals and visitors come to the shop. She says she meets a lot of people who take pottery back up North.
“There's certain things you have to do with the pots,” Hill said. “They can't be in cold weather, otherwise they'll break. So you have to look into where they’re going, what plants are being put into the pots, is a big thing. Obviously, if it's a tree, you don't want to put it in something smaller if it's going to be growing. You want it in something big, sturdy.”
Beach Pottery Etc. also sells a variety of pottery items, fountains, wine glasses, mugs, wall art, hand towels, coasters, ornaments, trinket dishes, jewelry, local art, magnets, and wooden sculptures.
The shop is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day and continues to get routine pottery shipments. The store is at 17980 San Carlos Boulevard, just before San Carlos Island in the greater Fort Myers Beach area.
This story was produced for the Senior Capstone course in the FGCU Journalism program. Hayley Lemery can be reached at hklemery9681@eagle.fgcu.edu.