Part Four
From Triumph to Tragedy: Crown Lynn’s Decline
Part Two
Humble Beginnings in Hobsonville
by Benjamin Agnew*
Crown Lynn, once a household name, is making a resurgence. Countless social media groups and collector’s markets dedicated to buying and selling pieces of pottery are evidence of a newfound cult following. Savvy op shops know to mark up the price of Crown Lynn in particular, even in absence of the trademark backstamp. Partially responsible for this phenomenon is its historical ubiquity followed by rapid downfall. As a company, it is both familiar and distant. Instead of conforming to a rapidly changing market, the company went under, more or less preserving their reputation.
This article tracks the final decade of Crown Lynn’s lifespan up until its acquisition in 1989. Though it is easy to attribute the company’s decline to the neoliberal economic reforms of the time, a raft of major resignations prior to this was also a major factor. There was a sense of inevitability felt by many employees, as if the writing had been on the wall since the early 1980s. Desperate to survive, the company’s major focus was strategic business decisions while their interest in cultural significance was heavily dampened.
Fighting against the tide
Fortunes at Crown Lynn started trending downwards in the late 1970s. A clear shift occurred at this time. The dream of becoming a New Zealand icon deeply embedded in the social world of the time, accompanied by concrete measures to achieve this, was replaced by the need to survive. The year 1977 saw the start of a persistent decline in domestic sales, even though Ceramco, Crown Lynn’s parent company founded in 1974, was at that time still increasing exports substantially each year.
Tom Clark, the man who for decades was uniquely associated with Crown Lynn, never treated his factory workers especially well. He was lucky that he mostly avoided union trouble despite persistently low wages on the factory floor. Though Crown Lynn’s key team of designers and managers were often generously rewarded in exchange for commitment and competence, their factory workers’ livelihoods were always sacrificed on the altar of company interests, sandwiched between the dual ambitions to keep profits up and prices low. Around this time, the latter was becoming increasingly important, as cheaper competitors became more and more dominant in the market. Despite the hardworking Māori women workers in particular being the envy of overseas producers, their meagre wages were still too high in the estimation of Tom Clark and his colleagues. As the 80s drew nearer, they started to contemplate other options, with serious consideration being given to the prospect of setting up a factory overseas for cheaper labour costs.
A map of the Crown Lynn factory, drawn up by Tonkin & Taylor in 1977. Reference: “Crown Lynn Potteries Ltd. – Newspaper Cuttings and General.” J. T. Diamond Collection, folder 77 index 1340, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.
A factory was eventually set up in the Philippines, causing some controversy within the company at the time. The “Made in New Zealand” branding, seen as quaint during the Second World War and crude in its aftermath, had once again become central to Crown Lynn’s appeal by the 1970s. Pair this with Ceramco’s rapid expansion into international markets, and retaining a certain homespun appeal felt significant. As it was, Filipino workers went on strike over working conditions and pay, which made news headlines in New Zealand. The establishment of Ceramco in 1974 allowed the separation of Crown Lynn, the New Zealand icon, from Ceramco, the business venture with shareholding in countless overseas ventures.
The Crown Lynn brand: A thing of the past
By the early 1980s, the Crown Lynn brand had lost its once-broad appeal. Only a few years after it had truly put to bed the myth of its inferiority relative to British competitors, a team of experts advised they market products as “Contemporary Ceramics”, totally eschewing the Crown Lynn brand. Employees at the time felt the designs were increasingly bland, lacking the tasteful flair Crown Lynn was known for. It seems that the eventual demise of the company was forecast here. Management at Crown Lynn had forsaken their ambitions to be a cultural icon and producer of high-quality ceramics, simply trying to survive as one of many pottery companies. For a company that had always been characterised by their relentless ambition and ability to execute, trying to succeed financially as just another faceless company meant certain failure.
Along with the uninspired design and a dismissive attitude to the Crown Lynn brand, Ceramco had, in the eyes of some, become overly diversified. A string of mergers and acquisitions, often involving businesses not directly connected to pottery, left Ceramco without a distinguishable identity. The Crown Lynn brand, whose credibility as a producer of quality tableware had been the work of three decades, was abandoned in favour of short-term profiteering or, as became the case, mitigating losses.
Death by deregulation
For many businesses in New Zealand, the Fourth Labour Government dealt a death blow to profitability. Sweeping neoliberal reforms, including deregulation and the abandonment of many import protections, caused dramatic changes to markets. New Zealand’s neoliberal politics contained echoes of reforms around the world, though were usually much more rapid and less longaeval. For Ceramco, this caused the shutdown of many of their subsidiary companies and, in 1987, a merger with Bendon Lingerie.
For Crown Lynn, business was not so badly affected in the immediate aftermath. Ceramics imports still had protections in place for the time being. However, the stock market crash of 1987 spelled the start of a steep downwards trend. A 10% reduction in import duties at the time put further pressure on Crown Lynn’s pricing. In 1988, Peter Dunne announced that tariffs on ceramics would be completely waived.
The company’s yearly case for further restrictions on imports came to a complete halt – they were suddenly confronted with an utterly different market. Despite this, some describe this as an excuse for the failure of an already dying company, one completely devoid of its former cultural significance and design innovation. There was a sense that the soul of Crown Lynn was already gone. By this point, many of the key designers, managers, and marketers had already left the company. Tom Clark had retired a few months before the election of the Labour government. Although his involvement by then was limited, this was another blow to the company spirits. A number of other key members of his team had left a few years earlier after years of service. The neoliberal reforms ensured Crown Lynn would never return to its former standing, but there was a sense of inevitability to their decline which lasted more than a decade and predated them by at least five years.
Management at Crown Lynn, on the other hand, privately held that they could survive, provided they employ novel technological solutions and be allowed more flexible employment agreements, which the unions vetoed. Although they occupied more than 50% of the New Zealand under $200 crockery market in 1988, with much of their competition by now coming from Asia, at the end of the financial year in February 1989 they posted a $2.3 million loss. Ceramco began to look into options to sell the Crown Lynn company, including a possible acquisition by Royal Doulton.
Surprisingly, 1987 and 1988 saw a final burst of creativity from the company with their European-inspired Modello collection among others, in contrast with many of the uninspired designs which preceded them. Nonetheless, 1988 saw layoffs of fifty staff members, sending the unionists, who could see what was coming, scrambling to bargain for redundancy benefits.
A memo to the Crown Lynn managerial team describing the critical situation at the company, less than a year before they would close down. Reference: Mitchell, J. A. Internal memo, August 10, 1988. Box 12, folder 5, Richard Quinn Collection. Te Toi Uku Crown Lynn & Clayworks Museum.
The end of an era
In 1989, things finally sputtered to a stop. Crown Lynn was sold to the Malaysian pottery giant GBH Porcelain, though Ceramco would survive in one form or another until 2001. Publicly, GBH Porcelain made the empty promise to continue to produce Crown Lynn for export to Australia and New Zealand. Legend has it that the old factory equipment is still lying around in a warehouse in Kuala Lumpur. The demolition process in New Lynn took about six months, with only a few items and one of the kilns being preserved for posterity’s sake. Official statements from management declared support for the liberalisation of markets undertaken by the government, whilst recognising the removal of protections, among other factors, had contributed to Crown Lynn’s decline, leaving them “on the ground and bleeding.” In their view, Crown Lynn had to compete on an even playing field with foreign producers who were able to operate on a much larger scale, often with much less restrictive labour laws.
There is a palpable irony to the way Crown Lynn ended. Its immense success undeniably derived from hard work, innovation, and creativity, but nonetheless was made possible by the Second World War, whose economic conditions allowed its crude designs, fashioned from gritty clay in pipe-and-tile machinery, to become the most available option to most New Zealanders, even if they could not compete with foreign talent. Inversely, the sudden change to rules of protection and movement towards a freer market flooded New Zealand with cheap imports which, though Crown Lynn’s inferiors in quality, were much less expensive.
A sign for Ambrico Place, near Clark Street in New Lynn. Reference: Author’s own photo.
Crown Lynn always depended on the particular talents of a small but extraordinary group of people, and the often-uncredited hard work of hundreds of factory workers, but they lived and died to some extent by economic policy. In some ways this is a mercy: the Crown Lynn craze today would almost certainly not have reached the same heights if they had continued on, compromising on quality in order to be affordable. The company has left an indelible mark on the many communities it touched. In New Lynn now you can see the old claypits being subdivided for housing, a dozen or so streets named after Crown Lynn and other potters, and even The Brickworks restaurant in LynnMall. So much of the history of the company is bound up in the stories people attach to it, which exist all around, waiting to be preserved.