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Website: nothingunwanted.win
Instagram: @nothingunwanted.studio
I’m an aspiring architect. I switched from project management because I was building a lot of digital things and wanted to build physical things, so I retired from that career. When I saw the Artisan Accelerator program, I thought it would be perfect to build my portfolio and launch my interior design brand. I thought I could work in the woodshop and metalshop and collaborate with other fabricators. As an architect, I want to actually know how to take designs from ideation to a finished product. NextFab is a good place to think of ideas and be in community with practitioners who can help.
I have an undergrad degree in literature and started a master’s in library science, though I didn’t complete it. I’m a book nerd who became a librarian who became a project manager. I went to CUNY – I’m originally from New York and moved to Philadelphia in July, just a block away from NextFab. I roll out of bed and say, “Ok, time to go to the studio.”
I make portable heirlooms – architectural moments that folks can take from apartment to apartment. They’re for people not on the housing ladder and not wealthy. I center the client in mind. My products are small items that can move, like decorative wall plates, light switches, and hardware for drawers. I’m working on coasters with leather and acrylic. For a future item, I’m prototyping a wall-mounted piece that can be a magnet or wall piece to hold dry bouquets, in partnership with a local floral artist Brkfst in March.
I’m addressing a market need. I’d been on the outs at corporate and wanted to transition, so I started following architects and interior designers and going to trade events and talks. I was moved by their craft and what they were making, but part of me was like, “No one I know can afford you.”
That problem became my problem space. I asked, “Why can’t anyone afford you? What makes it unrealistic to lower the price point?” I asked really direct questions to people, like how would an interior designer solve a problem for your space, and with your constraints and budget, what could you afford? The answers helped me shape the business. People wanted lighting design for studios, so I did that as well.
Creatively, I love Afrofuturism and Sun Ra aesthetics – treating space as a site of myth-making. I’m taking my practice as a collage artist and painter and bringing it into these objects. They’re future heirlooms that also celebrate Black culture and capture the stories of people and musicians I admire. I created wall plates inspired by musicians and coasters based on color stories from their songs – collages with materials and album colors. The business stems from both economic necessity and cultural affinity.
I volunteered in Philly last week with Coop of Hood Mid Century Modern, who is a public intellectual talking about the history of Black architects and interiors as it relates to Black culture. His mission stemmed from seeing these iconic architectural buildings in the neighborhood and realizing people were unknowingly living in mid-century modern buildings. I worked with him last week when he was on tour at the Cecil B. Moore Free Library. Many folks from the community met up and discussed things like Germantown architecture and restoration projects.
The musicians I feature are Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and Don Cherry. I also play certain music on reels, like Bill Evans. I’m into all sorts of spiritual jazz, but hip hop as well as lo-fi hip hop.
Some of the best moments have been connecting with people over culture. A grandmother came to the Christmas Village this year with her granddaughter. She told me about Pharoah Sanders – she saw him twice in Africa, but one time they wouldn’t let her into the club until Pharoah Sanders did so personally. Having that connection and continuity is the spiritual north star of why I started this brand. I want to make heirlooms that can kick off talking points.
It wouldn’t be hard if I didn’t have an experimental mindset, but I fail so much. I fail so, so much. The first two weeks in the laser labs, learning settings to engrave on certain metals, I wasted a lot of materials and money. But I stuck through it, took the failure, wiped it off, and kept going. It takes challenges and makes them fun. I expect that nothing is going to go right, and I’m going to have to fumble forward and do my best with the results, treating each failure as a learning lesson.
At my first markets, none of my ideas were selling. I’d put a lot of heritage and thought and history into it, and it kind of hurt. But other things were selling, so I had to reframe and understand the customer and reposition the products. Perhaps be more vertical and loud with things that sell, and have things that don’t in the retail area, so if people like them, they can be called to it. That worked. The customer might not have high intent to buy, but depending on where I am, I can learn how to meet them in their needs.
There are many stories, but the namesake comes from a song called “Father Stretch My Hands” by Kanye from 2016. The lyric was, “Beautiful morning, nothing unwanted.” I was so in love with the sonic imagery – it was so optimistic and triumphant. I wanted to capture that. The logo, NU, created a cool graphic, and I thought of it as I heard the song and thought it was perfect. The wave and continuous flow show the idea of culture and heritage being continuous. Parts of culture might be discarded, but it’s within our own duty to reuse, assemble, and make it valuable.
I reinforce brand ideas by making things using reclaimed materials from different studio bins. I’ll go into the hardware drawers and take discarded nickel, copper, and brass from the jewelry studio. Being “Nothing Unwanted” reclaimed that and became the ethos of continuity, but also not being wasteful.
I worked at Skillshare at the time when I came up with this idea. The founder took the whole team to Barclays to see Life of Pablo on tour. I thought, “I want to get into set design. I want to be an exhibition designer.” So that’s what kicked this off. Shoutout to the founder for paying for the whole team. It was a canon event.
I have so many goals. I eat, drink, and think about this all the time. For 2026, I want an EIN to become legit and apply for grants. I just registered as an LLC. I want to apply for funding to help unlock the next phases of business. The e-commerce route is the biggest next step to unlock.
I’m treating this period as getting to know my customer. I want to get better at merchandising, build a digital footprint, and do social media marketing. I’ll maintain local brick-and-mortar relationships and launch branded partnerships. That’s what works with my pacing right now – partnering with other local brands that have a cool mission and take their scraps and give them new life. Brkfst in March, the florist I’m partnering with, does a lot of weddings, so they have lots of scraps of dried flowers. I’ll be launching my wall-mounted bouquet with them.
There will be lots of giving back, working with local organizations doing preservation or spatial work, or if they need architectural or interior design services. The first $100 I made, I donated to the Black Panther Party of PA because they were funding a new community center. I’m looking for opportunities to partner and do meaningful things.
I’m at a point where I need to decide how to thread the needle between being scalable and being a lifestyle brand, without having the mission take the back seat to scaling and growth. I have to weave between those two mindsets.
I also want to create a funnel where I’m no longer the person selling all the time. I need to set monetary goals. What would it look like to have a year of profit to pay for school? It becomes more fine-tuned and accurate. How do I get the business to become self-sustaining, where I can be in school and hire someone?
Good interiors and good architecture. I love walking around and seeing inside people’s homes. I like traveling and seeing well-thought-out public spaces. My fiancée and I travel a lot. We spent June in the Netherlands and saw how architecture and urban planning intentionality shape culture. I can have a hand in bringing that sort of intentionality into not just families, but generations. That helps keep me on my mission. People are doing really great things with interior and landscape design in cities around the world.
There are fewer people on the housing ladder, so it’s a growing niche. There are more people in small spaces and apartments. I have a long career ahead of me because my work is inherently useful. Being an artist, I’m always creating for myself and expressing myself, but this past year, I’ve seen the difference between creating for myself and for a client. Being service-focused makes me feel more valuable and happy to be here and able to contribute. Lots of people have been eviscerated from the middle class, and this work is useful.
The Pharoah Sanders moment I mentioned before, but on the same day, I had a non-commercial reminder as to why I do what I do. A Middle Eastern man in his late 30s or early 40s, who couldn’t speak English, came to my booth at the Christmas Village. He said, “I’m so glad you’re here.” I think that was the only thing he knew in English. I was shaking his hand, trying to mirror his genuine excitement.
He looked through the drawers that had hardware in them. I put little stones from my rock collection in there to encourage people to touch things, and he touched all the stones and not any of the knobs. I was like, “That’s cool, man, you don’t have to care about the drawers.” He picked up a red and yellow sandstone and said, “This reminds me of home.” He had only been in Philly for a month. To see him connect with this rock – I felt like that was super rewarding.
My brand is for the people not on the housing ladder, whether migrants or people stuck in rentals. I always say, migration is inevitable, homemaking is intentional. He lived through the stone. There was no language connection, but he was seeing the ethos of home and migration, and gratitude because of the object.
I regret not giving him that rock. If by chance you ever see this, please reach out; it’s yours!
Market positioning. There are not a lot of working-class interior designers or architects – they go for people with disposable income. Keeping the working class in mind separates me from contemporaries through pricing or the persona of my client. I’m taking a niche blue ocean strategy. I’m thinking of surfaces to beautify that are common in homes, like a utility panel. I make wall-mounted things that are interchangeable because clients don’t have tools. I have a unique perspective and empathy, and I focus on the user experience, being in a culture and curiosity mindset. I also ask a lot of questions, sometimes as simple as asking if my idea is cool.
The laser room, mostly because it’s easy for me to have an idea and rapidly create a prototype, build it, and realize, “Oh, this is going to fall apart.” Then a mix of jewelry and metals. I like working in the metal shop, but I use the jewelry shop because of the smaller torches to work with metal at a smaller scale. I use a little woodshop as well. I don’t have a specific home at NextFab, but if I had to choose, the laser would be home.
I came in with the mindset of wanting to explore all the shops because I want to speak to every craftsperson to understand more means of production and get ideas on how to take concepts from start to finish.
I need to mention that my fiancée is a ceramicist, and she will make clay pieces for me too.
“Invest a lot of time in failing and get comfortable with failing. Speak to everyone. Being in a community like NextFab, the hidden perk is that everyone wants to problem-solve and help you. You can speak to someone about a concept, and they’ll show you a much more efficient way to execute it. Be curious and get comfortable understanding you’re not going to get it right the first three to five times, but ask for help. I’m a recovering only child, so it took me a while before I learned to ask for help.”
The community aspect. I’m around so many people who create and make beautiful things and are in genuinely good spirits. They’re super positive and want to make things happen. The maker part really creates the vibe. Everyone wants to execute on cool ideas. It’s a community of practice, super social, with no meanies. Everyone has a good, generous vibe. People help out and donate their time. It feels rewarding to see how their ideas have impacted me, and getting to show other people your progress.
Definitely cruising on the goals I talked about. I want to attend InvestFest in Atlanta. It’s the largest entrepreneurial festival in the world, catered around Black culture and made by Black influencers. I want to see how my product and story coalesce there.
I want to go to school to study interior architecture in the fall. I’m planning to study in Europe and have narrowed it down to two or three schools. I want to go to the motherland – the Netherlands. Interior architecture is a protected profession there, but it’s not in the States. It’s either an architect or an interior designer, but we don’t have the architecture skill set for builds. This is a particular type of study in Europe.
The big question mark is setting up how to continue running the business. I’d love to stay manufactured and produced in Philly and be away for school. I need to find the people I need to put in place.
Two answers: I wanted to join to get experience speaking to all sorts of craftspeople. My goal is to become an architect, and from what I gather, architects who are better able to empathize with collaborators have better results, so I wanted to have that mindset and understand their problem set.
My partner spent two to three years in Brooklyn as a ceramicist on scholarship, one she got by taking the chance and asking communities for scholarships. She got so much value. I looked for a program and thought, “It’s my turn to try that.” It’s like a club where you’re getting thousands of dollars of value.
In a one-way conversation, I want to ask people to think about how an interior designer or architect can improve their lives. You don’t have to contact me, just reflect, and when I meet you, I’ll ask.
Written in Partnership with FORMATION. Media