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In today's episode, I sit down with Nate Mell, founder of Felt + Fat, a Philadelphia-based ceramics company producing tableware for both restaurants and direct-to-consumer customers.

We talk about how Felt + Fat began supplying custom tableware to restaurants, why ceramics made sense as a business from a unit-economics perspective, and how debt-financed equipment shaped the company’s growth and risk profile. Nate walks through the operational realities of scaling a labor-intensive manufacturing business, the shift from wholesale to direct-to-consumer, and how capital decisions around space, equipment, and staffing affected margins and cash flow. We also get into the limits of vertical integration, what rapid expansion exposed about the business model, and how a period of financial distress forced a clear-eyed reassessment of what the company actually does best — ultimately leading to a narrower, more sustainable operating scope.

This was a candid, detailed look at the mechanics of running a U.S.-based manufacturing business and I can't thank Nate enough for his transparency around some pretty sensitive topics. I learned so much during our conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.