East Fork didn’t start out as an equitable workplace experiment. Its 2009 origins were more “intense, heady, craft legacy stuff,” says cofounder and CEO Connie Matisse—in part because her husband and cofounder, Alex Matisse, is the great-grandson of the impressionist painter Henri Matisse. But as the couple and their friend John Vigeland grew the pottery company into a cult-favorite, direct-to-consumer brand—complete with a viral mug—things got heated in different ways.
It started in 2018, when they moved their headquarters—from a tiny North Carolina town to a larger factory in nearby Asheville.
