Fresh Faces: 23 New Talents to Watch

Brendan Marshall, George Tang, and Ian Ferguson met while studying at Stanford—Marshall and Ferguson were getting their M.B.A.s, and Tang was getting his master’s in computer science. It was during their last year of school that the trio came up with the idea for a company that would bring their favorite chefs into their own homes for events. The result is Kitchit, a service offering custom-tailored meals made by well-known chefs, like Top Chef’s Marcel Vigneron and Dan Kluger of ABC Kitchen in New York, for gatherings of under 100 people. Launched last September, the Kitchit Web site allows professional or amateur party planners to send booking inquiries directly to chefs. After working together to come up with a custom menu, the chef does all the shopping, cooking, and clean-up, while billing is handled through the site. (The Kitchit staff can refer users to recommended sommeliers and staffing companies.) The site offers an option to sell tickets to guests directly for events like fund-raisers, pop-up restaurants, or public events. Kitchit, which launched in San Francisco, expanded to Los Angeles and New York earlier this year. Costs start at $40 per person, and corporate clients have included Nestlé, First Republic Bank, and Gordon-Biersch Brewery.

Amy Merrick grew up surrounded by flowers and nature—she was raised on a bucolic New Hampshire farm, and her grandmother worked as a florist—but it wasn’t until a “life-changing” 2009 apprenticeship at Red Hook floral boutique Saipua that she made the switch from prop stylist to flowers. Merrick officially launched her own company, Amy Merrick Flowers and Event Styling, last year. “People generally hire me because they respond to more natural, organic arrangements,” says Merrick of her romantic, overgrown style. In addition to social events, Merrick’s corporate clients include Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss, CNN, and Yahoo. Later this summer, she’ll begin teaching monthly flower-arranging classes out of her new Brooklyn-based studio.

Not long after meeting through a mutual friend, Sugar Taylor and Narine Hovnanian launched their Washington-based design and planning firm, DIYva Designs, in 2010. After two successful years planning mostly weddings (they’re currently working on 15), the duo have set their sights on expanding their corporate clientele. In January, they launched the corporate leg of their business, Taylor & Hov, with a focus on providing event design and branding to nonprofit, corporate, and government clients. No strangers to the corporate world themselves—Hovnanian spent close to three years planning meetings, conferences, and events for association management company SmithBucklin while Taylor worked as an office manager for a financial-planning firm—they’re hoping to translate their handcrafted style for a new audience. “We really strive to bring a new, fresh perspective to anything we do,” says Taylor.

“We want to give our clients a creative cuisine experience,” says Brittany Ferrin, who owns Chicago catering company Truffleberry Market with her husband and co-executive chef, Vaidotas Karsokas. Case in point: the recent BHLDN Chicago store opening. The duo incorporated the brand’s feminine, romantic style into the menu and presentation with hors d’oeuvres like truffle-and-fontina vol au vent shaped like pinwheels and heart-shaped gruyere-and-ham croque monsieurs punctured with toothpicks resembling tiny arrows. Ferrin earned her culinary degree from the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco; after a stint in Hawaii at award-winning restaurants I.O. and Pacifico, she moved to Chicago to take a job at sister restaurants Bin 36 and A Mano. It was there she met Karsokas, a graduate of the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago who worked with Norwegian Cruise Lines before making his way back to the Windy City. The two launched Truffleberry in 2008, with the goal of making everything by hand with artisanal ingredients. “Our menus are inspired by our clients’ visions as well as our love of travel and culture,” says Ferrin. Clients include Boeing, Craftsman, Sears, Juicy Couture, and Sara Lee.

Chef Malcolm Mitchell has been building a name for himself in the D.C. food scene over the past several years through his catering company, M. Mitchell, the Chef, and the buzz has reached a fever pitch since he became a finalist on the current season of Food Network Star. The classically trained chef specializes in what he calls “Geechee cuisine,” a blend of Southern and Caribbean cooking. In addition to executing dinner parties for clients like Chris Tucker and Washington Wizards player Rashard Lewis, and events for companies like the American Heart Association, Allergan Inc., and Perennial Sports and Entertainment, Mitchell has his own radio show,“Choppin’ It Up With the Chef,” on Radio One’s WOL 1450 Talk Radio.

Chris Courtemanche is the man behind Renhaus Visualization Studio, an L.A.-based 3-D rendering studio with a focus on creating C.G.I. visualizations for the event and marketing industry. “I think our renderings confirm the age-old saying, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words,’” says Courtemanche, who has more than eight years of experience in the event design and production world, including as the creative director of R Design Group, where he realized how vital sharing an accurate vision to clients was. "[I saw people relying] heavily on inaccurate hand sketches, collage, and mood boards for presentations," he says. So he turned to high-end software typically used in architecture in order to offer clients a hyperrealistic look at how their budget would be allocated. Courtemanche launched Renhaus in 2010, and has already created successful event renderings for international brands like Microsoft, Absolut, GQ, Hennessy, and Red Bull.

With dozens of years of combined experience in the event, film, theater, and music industries under their belts, Kelly Markus, Sean Ryan, and Paul Daly founded full-service event production company Markus Daly Ryan under two years ago. The New York-based trio describes their style as “Mad Men meets True Blood meets Coachella, with a Rolling Stones and Chemical Brothers soundtrack” and past clients include Coca-Cola, Anheuser Busch, and the New York City Wine & Food Festival. The partners handle sponsorship, creative direction, production design, and PR coordination for galas, festivals, and marketing events.“We believe creativity should live in the design and in the budget,”says Markus.“We’re obsessed with quality and sticklers in execution.”The group most recently produced the Univision Deportes launch. Next up: a July fund-raiser for Italy’s Emilia Romagna Earthquake region, this year’s Wine & Food Festival in October, and the INI Foundation Gala in November.

When your first client is the White House, you know you’re off to a good start, according to Chicago-based Jami Darwin, who last December launched her eponymous business offering 3-D paper decor, surface print design, and illustration. Darwin, who started her career on the visual staff at Neiman Marcus’s Chicago location before starting Letterspace, a wholesale stationery line, was asked to create 11 large-scale paper-Christmas-tree sculptures as well as paper holly leaves and poinsettias to decorate the White House for the holidays. “It was the perfect marriage of my visual and paper background,” says Darwin, who now concentrates full-time on events and installations. Most recently creating paper airplanes, pinwheels, floral centerpieces, and a paper flower backdrop for the Lurie Children’s Hospital opening gala in Chicago, Darwin says her goal is to help designers wow guests by using simple materials in unexpected ways.

Revae Schneider, a former mixologist at Chicago’s Gilt Bar and Union Sushi & Barbeque Bar, launched her bar-catering and styling company Femme du Coupe in October with the aim of making mixology accessible. She offers a variety of liquor-related services, including bartending at events, where she likes to practice what she calls “interactive mixology,” guiding guests as they create their own drinks alongside her. Schneider also specializes in teaching private corporate groups of up to 50 how to make classic cocktails, during which she leads participants through the process of creating three drinks.

Lisa Jammal founded the Tweet Squad in November, positioning her company as the go-to social media team for corporate brands, start-ups, events, and marketing campaigns. Based in Los Angeles, Jammal brings experience from more than 12 years in public relations, specializing in the entertainment and music industry. In 2011, Kiehl’s asked Jammal to be the on-site social media manager for a launch event, a project that made her realize there was an opportunity to start a company that integrated public relations with social media strategy. Jammal and her team can execute on-site social media strategies for a particular event or integrate platforms like Twitter, Facebook, blogging, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Ustream, and more with long- or short-term in-house projects, sales, and marketing tactics. “The goal is to reach out and start conversations that feel personal, not generic,” says Jammal, whose clients have included Condé Nast Ideactive, Monster Cable, and FremantleMedia North America. “We’re constantly thinking about new ways to communicate.”

With recent corporate event clients like Brides, Red PR, Undertone, and Burgess Yachts, Jeeyun Lee and Yena Jung offer full-service floral design and decor-related services for social and corporate events through their New York-based company, Blush Designs. Lee worked in the photo department at BizBash and Glamour. Jung left the world of investment banking in 2010 to take a job as the events director of Flowers of the World, managing the venerable floral company’s Trump Soho and Ritz Carlton Battery Park accounts. With their arrangements, the duo often aim for a monochromatic look. “We use every shade of a particular color from the lightest to its deepest shade,” says Lee. “The varying shades give texture and add depth to any arrangement.”

Created by C.E.O. and co-founder Lauren Wolff, Spotsi is a Web and mobile platform that allows users to curate tours themed around a topic or event. After three years as a branding designer and new business manager at advertising agency Ceft and Company NY, Wolff entered the Designer as Entrepreneur Master’s Program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. “My business partners, Anthony Carroll and Sam Gosling, and I had already worked on the Spotsi concept beforehand, but the projects I did at S.V.A. really helped set me up for pitching and connecting with brands,” says Wolff. Last fall, Spotsi was chosen for the Portland Incubator Experiment, a program that partners start-ups with brands through advertising agency Wieden & Kennedy. There, the Spotsi team worked on projects with mentors from Coca-Cola and Target. While the location-based social media tool can be used for personal applications, brands and planners have the option to upgrade to personalized brand pages. “Multi-day conference or event attendees can have instant, on-the-go access to information with photos, descriptions, and directions to event locations and convenient spots nearby,” says Wolff. “[Curated local tours] are also a great way for lifestyle brands to extend the story of their brand and become more social, especially at major events such as SXSW or the Olympics.”

While planning their June 2010 wedding, Matej and Kelly Ucen decided they wanted wooden farm tables for the reception.“But we couldn’t find a rental company anywhere in Boston that offered them,” she says. After several months of fruitless searching, the couple—who both have experience in woodworking—decided to make 22 of their own.“We put up a Web site to rent out the tables, and by the time our wedding came about they were being rented on a regular basis,” Kelly says. Launched as Farm Tables 4 Rent in January 2010, they expanded to a full- service Boston-based event rental company called New England Country Rentals in January 2011. The inventory now includes bars, lounge furniture, china, flatware, chairs, glassware, and vintage decor items, but the company specializes in rustic custom-made tables, chairs, and benches. While their items have proven to be popular at weddings, the Ucens’ rentals have also shown up at events for Louis Vuitton and Martha Stewart, and the opening party for Ghost the Musical.

“Our ability to provide programs that merge the online and offline is our strong suit,” Terry Lozoff says of Antler Agency, the full-service social and interactive marketing firm he owns with Lucian Garro. The Boston-based duo were former partners at the marketing agency Street Attack, where they orchestrated nationwide experiential marketing campaigns and promotional events. They now use technology applications, social media, digital content, and interactive events to generate buzz for brands like vitaminwater, Global Post, PF Flyers, and Equal Exchange. Case in point: last year, Antler Agency won several awards for a Liberty Mutual campaign designed to encourage conversation on the topic of senior-citizen driving. Working with doctors, Antler created motion-restricting suits that, when worn, simulated the symptoms of old-age ailments like arthritis for a series of experiential events around the country.