Not all DIY blogs are a gateway to a successful, lucrative production company and a spot as a regular guest on one of the most popular shows on daytime television. But of course, not all bloggers are Monica Mangin. She’s a designer, lifestyle expert and founder and CEO of Lansdale-based East Coast Creative Productions (EC2). On any given day, she might be brainstorming ideas for an upcoming TV segment. (Gardening hacks? Check. Holiday decorations? Check. Door décor? You bet.) Or maybe she’s ducking into a production meeting about a recent video shoot. Or maybe she’s fielding phone calls and Zoom calls from prospective clients who want to talk branded content. Or maybe—and most likely—she’s doing all three.
Not only does Mangin know her way around a home reno project, she also can tell you when to use who and when to use whom in a sentence; she began her professional life as an English teacher in Bucks County’s Pennridge School District. She may not have known it at the time, but she was in a dress rehearsal, of sorts, for her future career as an on-camera personality. “If you can keep a terribly tired, first period class of 17-year-olds engaged at like 7 a.m., you’ll crush it on TV,” Mangin says.
Mangin grew up in Massachusetts and moved with her parents and younger brother to Bucks County while she was in high school. She admits that she accepted the relocation begrudgingly—after all, what teenager wants to be whisked away from friends and all that’s familiar only to be plunked down in a new town hundreds of miles away? But the move afforded her the opportunity to tackle what she refers to as her first major DIY project—the family’s new home. “[My parents] let me do any rooms in the house that I wanted to,” Mangin says. “And I really applaud that because some of them were terrible.” There was her “angsty” teenager bedroom—black walls with silver trim. But not every design choice elicits a cringe when recalled today; Mangin completed her first-ever accent wall mural in the dining room, made up of dozens of color-block squares.
Her creativity was a constant that was encouraged in the household, Mangin says.
Later, as a young wife and mother of four living in the Quakertown area, she began to take on bigger DIY projects. “It was a lot of just working with what I had,” Mangin says. “I think I DIYed out of a combination of it being a necessity and a great creative outlet.” She and her best friend, Jess Jackson, started helping each other out with different projects at their respective homes. In 2011, they started a DIY blog at a time when these windows into one’s personal triumphs and trials on the home front weren’t as ubiquitous as they are today. They called it (in a very tongue-in-cheek way) The Real Housewives of Bucks County, a nod to the Bravo series that was a few years old at the time. “We did pretty well because we got a cease and desist from the actual show,” says Mangin. “We were like, ‘We’re being sued, but this is the best news because it means we’re doing something right.’” The blog (and the eventual business) was given a new name: East Coast Creative.
Another indicator they were on the right track: The Nate Berkus Show came calling and asked them to participate in a weekend warrior challenge. This would mark the first in a series of segments they’d do for the show. It seemed like everything was clicking. Within six months, they had their own show, Knock It Off! on ABC’s Live Well Network. But when Knock It Off! was done after two seasons, Jackson decided to pursue other creative endeavors, and Mangin had to figure out her next move. By this time, she had bowed out of the education world to focus solely on the DIY and design business. When the vision she had for a pilot she sold to HGTV didn’t turn out as planned, she realized it was time to take the reins: “I need to learn how to become a production company. I need to learn how to do this on my own.”
In 2017 Mangin brought on Gerry Grzywacz as president of East Coast Creative. The two previously had worked together on Knock It Off! and, additionally, Grzywacz had a solid resume built on years of experience in television production with several unscripted shows, including former TLC mainstay and home makeover pioneer Trading Spaces. Their titles, Mangin says, are fluid. Both wear many hats during the process of bringing a project to the finish line. But, as the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company, Mangin knows she’s somewhat of an anomaly. “I feel like I’m surrounded by a lot of strong women, but I think if I would take a wide step back, I would realize it’s definitely not as commonplace as it should be,” she says. “I think there is that hard line still of, you want to seem amenable to things and you don’t want to seem hard to work with, but at the same time you have good ideas. It’s a really tricky dance.”
The first content put out by EC2 as a production company was “The Weekender,” a DIY home makeover series and partnership with Lowe’s Home Improvement. Two more shows: “Homegating” (helping NFL fans tailgate at home) and “Home Becomes” (repurposing spaces during the stay-at-home days of COVID) were also collaborations with Lowe’s. EC2 is currently working on new content with Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Network. The DIY blog is still chugging along, too, tackling projects and makeovers both simple and complex around the home.
Mangin also has emerged as a familiar face on network TV, with more than a hundred spots on daytime shows like Live With Kelly and Ryan, the Today show and the Rachael Ray Show, where she’s covered every lifestyle challenge and home hack imaginable. Most recently, she’s become somewhat of a regular on Live. “I really like the pressure of live TV,” Mangin says. “It feels right when I’m doing it.”
She describes her approach to design as accessible and attainable. It’s important to her that whatever she’s pitching on television or her blog is doable in real life. If she’s working with a specific person, her goal is to elevate—not necessarily change—that person’s style. “I feel like I have the ability to chameleon into whatever you need me to be,” she says.
Perhaps her biggest “critics” are the young people she shares a home with. She has four children—Makenzie, Kaden, Kira and Callen, ranging in age from 13 to 20 years old—with her husband, Eric, who works in research and development at pharmaceutical giant Merck. Recently, Mangin’s children told her a bathroom at their home now resembles a bathroom at a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant, thanks to a paint job she orchestrated. “I don’t think it’s a super compliment,” she says with a laugh.
All kidding aside, Mangin says she’s happy to see that her flair for the creative is alive and well in her brood, particularly the two girls: “Our house looks like Michaels exploded.” It’s possible one or more of her children will follow in her footsteps in some capacity down the road; her two eldest kids have worked as production assistants for EC2. In the meantime, she’ll continue to grow her business and maintain her jam-packed schedule. Even with all of the success she’s earned, she still finds herself pondering the same question she was asking herself during her teaching days, when she felt a nagging itch to do something more: “Where do we go from here?”
Published as "Insight" in the December 2022 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
