Fourteen design businesses in Maplewood opened their doors to visitors Tuesday afternoon as part of St. Louis Design Week, and to make sure it was really a Maplewood event – each studio had a Maplewood food partner.
Among the open studios, Objex Design, in the second floor at the corner of Manchester and Sutton, is a product design and mechanical engineering firm. “We go from the napkin sketch to the factory floor,” Jake Salter said. He said they’ve been there six years, and have doubled the staff in the past five. Reeds American Table was the food partner.
See also: Maplewood design-related businesses to hold studio crawl, food is involved
V Three Studios, an architectural office, is in its second space in Maplewood after outgrowing its first — both are on Sutton. “This just a great thriving community, and we want to be part of it,” architect Josh Hellmann. It’s above Pie Oh My, which was the food partner.
5 Horizons Group, on Sutton, specialize in the recreational outdoor industry. The group designs, manufactures and distributes camping, hunting and fishing sporting goods under licensing agreements. Great Harvest Bread supplied cookies.
Tiny Little Monster designs and prints t-shirts. They expanded into a second space in the Greenwood neighborhood about a year ago, going from six employees to 14. “We’re in our busiest month ever, now,” co-owner Sloan Coleman said. “We break our records all the time. Doing Bernie Sanders t-shirts now, so that’s pretty cool.” Jonathan Jones, owner of Southwest Diner, was the food partner.
Producer with Fedele Studio, Blaine Deutsch said they’re “really enjoying part of the neighborhood and community. It’s neat to see the momentum that happening around here.” He said they’ve been there a year, and have no plans to go anywhere.
“This street right here (Marietta Avenue) deserves to have a movie shot on it, and the parking lot should be a park,” Deutsch said. He also said Marietta should be grass so they could walk barefoot to Side Project Cellar.
