Take one step into Shop Mayker’s Germantown space and you’ll instantly get a feel for founder and creative director Megan Proby’s aesthetic.
Jen McDonald
It’s chic but accessible. Beautiful yet functional. Muted tones that make a statement with their craftsmanship, not their flash.
It’s a design philosophy Proby cultivated in the early years of Mayker Creative (previously known as 12th Table). What started as a wedding and events planning business,and grew to include residential staging for real estate and photo shoots, has now expanded into a full-blown aesthetic empire, with Proby putting her skills to varied uses.
“At the beginning it was definitely focused on weddings, but I think throughout the whole process, I was really trying to solve a problem for myself, and I wasn't looking at it like somebody who's been in the industry for a long time. So, it was, I think, a very fresh perspective on it,which allowed us to do something different and unique,” explains Proby, a former English major who took the entrepreneurial plunge when she became frustrated by the lack of beautiful and accessible pieces for her own wedding.
“I'd never had a reason to encounter the events world before, so when I started looking for rentals for my wedding I just thought, ‘This can't possibly be it.’ At the time, it was very much more a big box, generic industry. It has certainly changed a lot since then. But I decided to quit my job and start a rental company.”
She grew the events side of things into three verticals: rentals, floral design, and creative direction. But then Proby saw more opportunities to expand her design reach.
“We do a lot of corporate now. We love doing that. Still do weddings. We do brand activations, just a bunch of different places we stick our toe in. And then we do interiors, and that's primarily home staging and Airbnb design. We have between 40 to 50 homes staged at a time in a given month,”she says.
Enter: a retail shop.
Jen McDonald
“Most of our lines of business were born out of a season in someone's life. You're selling your home, or you're getting married, and so there wasn't room for a day-to-day interaction with somebody,” she says. “We wanted a place where we could engage with people and have them get to know our brand outside of those pivotal moments. People always ask us, ‘Where did you get that? How can I buy that? What does this look like?’ We thought this was a great opportunity to do that. So, the shop is focused primarily on home décor and gifting, but we also have furniture elements.”
The space—tucked just behind Henrietta Red—showcases what Proby describes as “grounded contemporary” pieces. From dishware to throw pillows, coffee tables to candles, each piece in the shop has a modern take without feeling over-the-top. Or as Proby put it: “They're not too modern to where you're going to scare your mom and dad.”
The shop may have only been open a month, but Proby is never one to shy from growth and she’s already claiming new corners of the market for her company, launching e-commerce, bridal registry, and custom corporate gifting—something she sees as an extension of Mayker’s corporate events arm.
“We've found that our customers have been a little all over the place, but in a really good way, in that we're providing something that reaches different audiences,” she says. “So that's the common thread: you're using our tools, whether it's our rentals, whether it’s our shop; or whether it's our staging to make a beautiful space.”
Shop Mayker, 1216 4thAve. N., Ste. 110, shopmayker.com