Through his company Swiss Cutlery, Anthony Cann held 97% of Hornsea Pottery shares. In January 1997, he appointed Adrian Shaw as managing director, who tried many new designs to increase sales.

With Calipso, Bali, Banana, Jive, Cactus, Jigsaw, Opal, Omega and Onyx leaning storage jars, Hornsea Pottery tried to produce cheap and cheerful pottery to appeal to the mass market. Unfortunately, these designs did not sell well. 

In 1998, they bought Park Rose Pottery 10 miles north of Hornsea.

The Artisan ranges, with the hand-decorated ‘studio look’, were not a success either. Although he depicted Hornsea Pottery as the largest studio pottery in England, these ranges were too dependent on skilled labour. Peru, Lily, Cotswold and the Jubilee ranges were more conventional, but they did not have long enough to prove themselves before the Pottery finally closed in 2000 and the receivers were called in for the last time on 19 April 2000.

From October 1999 to April 2000 the Pottery had made £1 million worth of Brecon Blue for British Home Stores, but the delay in taking delivery, caused a crisis in cash flow, and the receivers were sent in. In achieving maximum output, the pottery had neglected the cardinal rule, not to allow more than 11% production to be for one customer.

Hornsea Pottery was one of scores of British Potteries that closed in the last decade. In the 1990s the British pottery industry was hampered by many problems, not least high fossil fuel tax and the corporation tax; working time directives (not a problem for developing countries who were now producing much cheaper goods for the British market); and continuing, seriously restrictive, health and safety rulings. Hornsea Pottery could no longer compete in this aggressive new market place where the expectations and demands had changed beyond recognition from those of the ‘60s and ‘70s.