Mugs, to drink tea or a collect?

I've recently debarked on producing some mugs that will be on sale alongside my work. The initial idea for these was to have another slightly more affordable and fun way to share my art work with people. After my initial contacts, research and tests I ordered a selection of mugs.

The mugs came and i wasn't too pleased with the quality of them, the print from digital printings were not true to the actual art pieces the mugs were meant to reflect. The picture was blurred and the colours were wrong. I decided that i wanted to produce a much better quality of product so went back to searching for a higher quality producer. At this point i was so lucky, sometimes i think connections happen for a reason. I stumbled across a company based in Stoke who produced high quality bespoke printing on Fine Bone China products. I am currently in the process of working with them to produce a set of mugs that not only represent what i want them to will match my art work in terms of quality. This however has brought a huge new topic into my business.

Am I just a painter? Or am I now a ceramics designer or am I both. I've got a whole new market to research and in terms of costings and where to sell to. Initially I wanted to make a product that was fairly cheap and cheerful now i'm making a quality of product that would be in the higher level of retail. I'm currently looking into places I can sell through and hoping to work out weather I can make a profit or even just break even if I produce my first run of mugs. There are so many possibilities with this and its defiantly something that i hope to pursue so watch this space for info as to where you can buy a Mug later in the summer. Jo x