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In-room ceramics are bought in the tens of thousands and lost at a rate nobody forecasts. Three specifications — a fitted tray, a laundry-rated body and a marked item — are what keep the loss rate from deciding the programme.

Schools, universities, hospitals and care homes buy tableware as part of a tray system, not as a table setting. Portion control, colour coding, trolley stacking and sterilisers define the brief — and the replacement economics decide whether the programme lasts.

A stadium serves thousands of people in a few hours, clears the site in one, and washes everything it reuses at a rate that breaks ordinary catering ware. Four specifications decide the programme.

A forecourt shop sells volume and impulse in the same square metre, and its tableware is unpacked, used and washed by staff with no time to be careful. Three specifications decide whether the range survives the year.

A bar sells a drink, and the drink arrives in a vessel that decides how it looks, how it holds its head and how long it stays cold. Ceramic does three of those jobs better than glass — and fails at a fourth unless it is specified correctly.

In a bakery or dessert shop the cup sits in the display case for hours before it is sold. That changes three specifications at once — how the decoration reads from the outside, how the pieces stack on a counter, and how much the staff can lose to breakage in a week.

A storage jar is bought in a set of three or four, filled with something oily or pungent, opened daily and expected to look identical to its neighbours after a year. Four specifications decide whether the set survives.

A Japanese or Chinese tableware line is not a set of bowls with a theme applied. The pieces have to work together — capacity, depth, rim, stacking and a chopstick rest that matches — and that is where most ranges fail.

A ceramic bottle is a packaging item that also has to be a food-contact container, a shelf object and a shippable weight. Three of its specifications are usually missing from the brief — and each one causes a specific failure.

Turkey is often filed under "emerging market" and treated like the Gulf or Latin America. It is not: it sits in a customs union with the EU, it has its own substantial ceramics industry, and its currency moves enough to change the shape of a contract.