Allied Maker

In the beginning, Ryden Rizzo was a team of one.

“I started my company in 2013, when I was still in school,” he says. “I was doing a project, making a new object every week, and initially, I’d planned to invite my peers to contribute. What I didn’t know was that when you’re just starting, it’s hard to convince people to participate.”

He’d called the project Allied Makers. But, he says, “It was just me. So I had to change it.” Thus: Allied Maker.

These days, the company, which produces high-quality lighting out of a 4,000 square-foot facility in Glen Cove, New York, may be better suited to its former title. Rizzo now employs a team of ten, and his widely acclaimed wares (made by hand in collaboration with a carefully chosen network of local fabricators) ship to locations worldwide. But it isn’t just that, or the quality of its materials and painstakingly applied finishes, that sets Allied Maker apart. “We’re not just a design studio,” Rizzo says. “We’re a manufacturing studio, too. Upstairs, we have design and assembly; downstairs is what we call ‘The Engine.’”

Though the company has advanced far beyond its secluded beginnings, its founding principles remain steadfast. “The brand is growing quickly,” Rizzo says. “But what I’m focused on right now is delivering the best quality we can.”