Welcome to Creators on the Rise, where we find and profile breakout creators who are in the midst of extraordinary growth.
That old expectation still lingers: you’re either right-brained or left-brained. Art, or science.
Garbo Zhu, though, defies expectation. She’s always loved making things, and when she started taking art classes in high school, she realized she loved 3D design. But she also loved physics. So she combined them, and went into architecture.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
She probably would’ve kept working in the field, if not for the pandemic. Like millions of other people, she was shut at home when COVID kicked in. To entertain herself, she bought some basic air-dry clay, taught herself sculpting, and tried making little pieces of pottery, just as a hobby. She posted photos of her work on Instagram throughout 2020, and then, noticing TikTok‘s growing popularity, made the jump to video in 2021. It wasn’t long before TikTok commenters started asking where they could buy her work.
And thus, Grumpy Kid Studio was born.
The memorable name comes from Zhu’s habit of carving tiny faces on all her pieces. “It’s just that feeling of adding a character to something that shouldn’t have a personality, like a cup, a plate,” she says. “I chose the face grumpy or angry because I think it’s almost creating a feeling when you see a grumpy baby. The baby is really cute, but it’s really grumpy. It’s creating that contrasting emotion that make you just want to know more about it.”
Lots of people wanted to know more about it. Zhu went from spending hours after her architecture job packaging and shipping orders from her parents’ living room to quitting that job and opening her own full-fledged studio with a staff of five. Together, they now sell between 400 and 500 pieces every month–helped, Zhu says, by her audience of more than 500,000 TikTok followers.
Check out our chat with her below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: Pretend somebody’s reading this and they’ve never seen your videos. Can you give me a little bit of background about you, where you’re from, and how you got into ceramics?
Garbo Zhu: Yes, sure. Hi, my name is Garbo Zhu. I was born and raised in Guangzhou, China. I came to Canada when I was 14. I studied architecture as a background, but during the pandemic when everything locked down, I was working from home. There was this creative bug in me that just really wanted to make something with my hand like I’m sure a lot of the other people were thinking about in the pandemic. I bought a bag of air-dry clay on Amazon, and I just started sculpting, posted about my creations on Instagram first, and then TikTok after. People started to ask me if I could sell them. Of course, air-dry clay is not something that I’m really comfortable selling, so I transitioned slowly into ceramics and that’s my main medium at the moment. My brand is called Grumpy Kid Studio, where we specialize in grumpy handmade ceramics. I share about my journey on social media like TikTok.
Tubefilter: Wait, you really didn’t start doing this until the pandemic?
Garbo Zhu: Yes. [laughs]
Tubefilter: That’s wild. I thought you were going to tell me it’s been something you’ve wanted to do since you were a kid.
Garbo Zhu: No.
Tubefilter: You’re so skilled at ceramics already, then, really quickly.
Garbo Zhu: Thank you. It took a lot of practice.
Tubefilter: Yes. I can tell. What were your interests as a kid? Were you into art then too?
Garbo Zhu: I think since I was a kid, I really liked creating things with my hands. I’m almost more drawn into 3D than 2D. I started taking art classes in high school, and because I was so interested in doing 3D art and combining that with physics, that’s why I went into architecture for my undergrad.
I worked in the field for I think two, three years before I quit my job and then did ceramics. It is a project I’ve been working on secretly, I guess, at the back of my head. The thing about ceramic that’s so amazing that I think really completes my artistic journey is that it’s something that takes a lot of patience, but you can see it relatively fast comparing to architecture, where you have to wait like five years, sometimes even longer to see a project come to life. I think that’s why I chose ceramics.
@grumpykidstudio How far we have come #grumpykidstudio #smallbusiness ♬ hotline bling cover by billie – favsoundds
Tubefilter: When did TikTok come into it? Did you start filming your sculpting right away?
Garbo Zhu: In the beginning, it was mostly on Instagram. I think it was 2020, Reels was not even a big thing, so I was just posting photos. I thought the only platform that I could post photos back then was Instagram. I was just posting photos, and I think it was 2021 is when I got my TikTok account and I just started posting video content. I didn’t really start doing it more consistently until last year, I’ll say 2022. Yes, 2021 was just mostly posting whatever footage I remembered to record. It was not a thing that I have to record everything. 2022 was the year that I quit my job and then I’m like, “You know what? With all the extra time I have on my hand, I might as well record all the steps in my process and post them on TikTok.”
Tubefilter: What was the push to quit your job? Was it because of content or was it the other stuff happening?
Garbo Zhu: It was mostly because I was selling my ceramics online, and then…There were two main reasons. One of them is because my job was in construction, so that means I have to physically go to work every single day when most of the people around me are still hybrid or working from home. My work was a bit of a drive. It was a two-hour commute every day by driving. That was number one. Number two was that I’m seeing that the money I could make on selling my ceramics works online is slowly surpassing my income with my day job. I’m like, “Oh, maybe I can just take this full-time and see where I can take this.”
Tubefilter: How has Grumpy Kid Studio expanded since you decided to start selling your ceramics? Behind the scenes, in production, do you have anybody on the team with you?
Garbo Zhu: In the beginning, it was just me in my parents’ living room, no studio. Really low expense because I didn’t even need to pay myself. All I needed to do is materials. Now we have a studio space in Montreal where we have four part-time and one full-time here. It’s seasonal full-time staff. Five plus me sometimes, so six people on the team, which is pretty cool. That has changed a lot.
Tubefilter: Are they all producing pieces or what are their roles behind the scenes?
Garbo Zhu: They have pretty distinct roles. I like to hire staff based on two reasons. One of them is if we see a project that we need a lot of wheel-thrown pieces, then we’ll hire a person who’s really good on the wheel. The other reason for us to give them the role is that we’ll always hire them as a general studio assistant and then we’ll see what their interests are and then put them in that role specifically. If I say I have a staffer that really wanted to do more, let’s say, painting, and I will put that person on airbrush or painting duties. If I have a staffer that wants to do more wheel-throwing, then I will put her on wheel-throwing duties. They all have slightly different tasks based on their interests and what they’re good at and their personalities as well.
@grumpykidstudio Making a sandwich plate for my French husband’s sandwiches #grumpykidstudio #potterygirl #potterytiktok #handmadeplate #madewithlove ♬ How`s Your Day
Tubefilter: How many pieces do you sell on average per month?
Garbo Zhu: I think 400 to 500 pieces a month.
Tubefilter: That’s pretty cool to grow that much in a year. Where did the name come from?
Garbo Zhu: It’s a good question because every time someone asks me that, I was trying to think of a more mature story.
Tubefilter: No, the real story!
Garbo Zhu: The real story is just that I’m always interested in putting faces on stuff. It doesn’t really have to be grumpy, any face, an animal face, happy face, sad face. It’s just that feeling of adding a character to something that shouldn’t have a personality, like a cup, a plate, or whatnot. I started doing it and people really liked that I have a face on this object that make me feel like, “If I want to keep doing this as a brand, maybe I should stick with one face so people recognize it easier instead of calling it the face ceramics brand or something.” I choose the face grumpy or angry because I think it’s almost creating a feeling when you see a grumpy baby. The baby is really cute, but it’s really grumpy. It’s creating that contrasting emotion that make you just want to know more about it. That’s why I choose the expression grumpy, so “Grumpy Kid Studio” because I feel like it looks like a kid, a tiny mug thing. That’s where the name came from.
Tubefilter: Perfect. You should never stop telling that story. How are things for you now in terms of time management? Obviously, now you’re managing this team and you’re also doing content, so you are busy. Tell me a little bit about your side of production. What are you doing on the average day?
Garbo Zhu: Generally, there is an average day, because now we do have more staff on the team, so I don’t have to physically touch every single piece. I think we’re at a point that, I was actually away from my studio for two weeks and we managed to pull off a sale. We did a launch without me being there at all. I just have to be online so if they have any questions, I’ll still be there to answer them quickly. The team could run without me physically being there for a certain period of time.
An average day for me, if I were in the studio, would be l spend mostly the morning creating content and filming or even producing a video so that’s out of the way for the day. The morning would just be me at home doing either admin stuff or content. Then in the afternoon, I’ll go in for a couple of hours just to quickly check in like, how’s everybody doing, catch up with the team, and just pretty much supplement what they have to do.
If they’re just short on, I don’t know, someone doing 10 mugs within the next two hours, then I’ll be the person to be to like, “Okay, okay, no worries. Do your thing then, I will just finish the things that you guys couldn’t finish.” That’s pretty much it.
Tubefilter: How important is TikTok or social media in terms of having grown this business? Do you think you ever would’ve done this without social media?
Garbo Zhu: No. Definitely not. I think compared to more traditional marketing…We don’t do any traditional marketing. We do have a mailing list, but we don’t send out any emails, really. We send out one email per month, and we’re still able to sell out every single time due to social media, because that’s something that we use every single day. We post content every single day. Just based on how we don’t have any other means of marketing and we’re still able to do so well, it’s just thanks to social media like TikTok and all of that.
Tubefilter: That’s amazing. I also wanted to ask, what was it like for you to be named to TikTok’s first annual API Visionary Voices list?
Garbo Zhu: It’s really cool, because when I got that email I’m like, “Wait, me?” Because I know that personally, I do follow a bunch of other ceramicists who are also in the community. I was like, “Wait, what about them?” It’s almost like, “Wait, I’m just quite new at this. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but thanks.” [laughs]
Tubefilter: Are you working on any big projects? Do you have any goals for this year you can talk about?
Garbo Zhu: Yes. In terms of projects, we’re still launching a bunch of different products, and we’re doing a big switch of the studio where it’s getting really technical, but before we were doing a lot of slipcasting work. Our more popular products were all slipcast, which is why it was easy before for me to hire anyone for them to join the team, because slipcasting you don’t really need a lot of knowledge in ceramics to start working. But I realized that a lot of my team members, they want to grow in ceramics and they want to learn different things within the ceramics world that is not just slipcasting. They want to be on the wheel, they want to do hand-carving, hand-building, a bunch of different techniques that we don’t really usually do because that requires more skillsets.
This year we’re actually trying to switch the products that we sell from just slipcasting to almost a 50/50 or even 60% on the wheel and 40% slipcast. It gives more chances for our team to try out different techniques and train them on the wheel as well so they’re happy, our customers are happy, and everybody’s happy. That’s a big change for this year. It does take a lot of time because everybody’s training, everybody’s learning this for the first time. It’s a little bit of a rocky, I guess bumpy ride, but we’re trying to get through it. It’s really fun, though, and really satisfying to help your staff grow, and then they’re learning something they haven’t tried before and they’re able to make a living doing the things that they learn on the job, so that’s really amazing.
Tubefilter: That is really interesting to me. I feel like it’s become common in a lot of industries, especially if you’re starting a new company, that you only people who already know what they’re doing. A lot of employers–unfortunately–don’t develop the patience for this entry-level training. I’m really intrigued by the fact that you are specifically looking for and helping people who are in a learning process. What makes you willing to do that?
Garbo Zhu: I think it’s because it’s a handmade business. We’re not a manufacturer, we’re not mass production, or even a coffee shop or something. It’s something where the mood of the staff really reflects for me directly on the work that we produce, and that reflects on the customer satisfaction. For me, it’s very important to keep my staff happy, because they’re all people with backgrounds in the art industry. Their backgrounds are either in architecture, photography, graphic design, so a variety of backgrounds. For them to make the switch as well, because all of them are trying to pursue ceramics now, it’s almost the same as what I was doing, but back then, I didn’t have as much resources. Also, I know that I’m someone that, when I was an employee, I really wished my employer would listen to me and help me grow, because if I feel like my employer wants me to grow, I want to help the team grow as well.
We’re not just thinking about so much like individualism, I guess, when we’re working together as a team. We wanted to make sure that everybody’s doing something they’re happy with. For me, it feels like that’s what makes sense, and it’s still within what we could do. Of course, we have to be more reasonable, we have to do things in order. That’s it. If this person requests to be on the wheel first, then we’ll put this person first and this person next, and then depending on when they joined the team as well. We cannot do like, “Oh, everybody wants to do the wheel now, so we have to train everybody at the same time,” which will be a mess. We still have some rules in place. Not super solid rules. We still negotiate and manage within the team.
So far it’s been doing good and I’ve been seeing a better work environment. People are happier with what they’re doing and more proud of what they’re doing, which I think is really important as well.
Tubefilter: Seeing somebody who’s willing to invest time and hire and train people is really, really nice.
Garbo Zhu: Thank you.
Tubefilter: Is there anything else you want readers to know? Anything else you wanted to talk about?
Garbo Zhu: Not so much. I guess I could talk about more specifically with TikTok because I did begin by using a lot more Instagram and I didn’t start taking TikTok seriously until, I think it was the end of last year, 2022 because for me, TikTok was something that I used to just recycle the same content I post on Instagram first and I just kept doing it, and then I didn’t see too much of growth and I just let it do a thing until one day I post a piece of content that’s about making a sandwich plate for my husband that couldn’t put a sandwich on a plate or something like that. That gained a lot of popularity on TikTok that it makes me realize that the community on TikTok, they love hearing stories and they love being a part of the making journey that makes me really see the importance of this app.
Then now I’m posting even more and more on TikTok because now I have a small community there that I feel like whenever I’m sharing a story, people are actually really excited about it with me. When I say like, “Oh guys, I need help with deciding what color to paint this vace in,” people are really invested in it and they will always tell me, “Hey, where’s part two? I really wanted to see what you did with that vace that you probably forgot about, but we do remember it.” I think that is a really cool part about TikTok that I don’t see in other apps. It’s just a community factor that people really wanted to– Because sometimes I got lazy, I post a piece of content and I forgot about it. I forgot to post about part two, and then people really hold me accountable and be like, “We want to see the results.” I think that’s quite cute, and pretty fun to use.
