Kiln firing scheduler for pottery studios

The idea

Community ceramics studios multiplied after 2020, and every one of them has the same bottleneck: kiln space. Firings are still managed with a paper calendar taped to the kiln room door, a clipboard sign-up sheet, and Venmo requests the studio manager chases for weeks. Members do not know when the next cone 6 glaze firing is, whether there is room, or what they owe. The kiln tech loads from a scribbled list.

The wedge is that class-booking software (Mindbody, Momence) has no concept of a firing or of shelf inventory. A firing is not a class; it is a dated event with capacity measured in half-shelves and a price per unit. Model that one object properly, take payment at booking time, and hand the kiln tech a clean load manifest, and the studio’s worst weekly admin chore disappears.

Who pays

The studio owner pays 49 USD/month flat. These are small businesses with 50 to 300 members, real revenue, and an acute, named pain; 49 USD is below the threshold anyone deliberates over. Members pay per firing through the studio’s own Stripe account, so the studio also stops leaking unpaid firing fees, which usually covers the subscription several times over. Distribution: ceramics studio owners congregate in a handful of Facebook groups and the Studio Potter community; a before/after post about killing the clipboard travels well there.

MVP scope

• Firing events with type, date, half-shelf capacity, and per-unit price
• Member booking with Stripe Checkout and transactional capacity enforcement
• Kiln tech load manifest per firing, printable
• Firing status flow with an unloaded email to members
• Admin dashboard listing upcoming firings and revenue per firing
• Skip for v1: class scheduling, membership billing, waitlists, multi-studio accounts, native apps

Build KilnQueue, a web app for community ceramics studios to sell shelf space in kiln firings. Stack: Next.js (App Router), Supabase (Postgres, Auth, RLS), Stripe Checkout.

Roles: studio admin, kiln tech, member. Magic-link auth, no passwords.

Core flow: admin creates a firing event with a date, kiln name, firing type (bisque cone 06, glaze cone 6, etc.), price per half-shelf, and total shelf capacity expressed in half-shelf units. Members see a calendar of upcoming firings, pick one, choose 1 to N half-shelves, and pay via Stripe Checkout. Capacity is enforced in Postgres with a transaction that locks the firing row, so two members cannot oversell the last half-shelf. Bookings are refundable until a cutoff (default 24h before firing) via a cancel button that triggers a Stripe refund.

Pages: public studio page with firing calendar, member booking flow, member dashboard (my bookings), admin firing CRUD, kiln tech load manifest (printable list per firing: member name, shelves booked, ware notes, paid status).

Non-obvious details: each booking has a free-text ware description and a needs-tall-shelf flag that the manifest groups by; firings have a status machine (open, full, loading, fired, unloaded) and members get an email when status hits unloaded.

Pricing: studios pay 49 USD/month flat via Stripe Billing; members pay per firing, money goes to the studio's connected Stripe account (Stripe Connect Standard).