Inside the New Yowie Hotel in Philadelphia

When she was growing up, Shannon Maldonado wanted to be a fashion designer.

After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, Ms. Maldonado spent a decade on the design teams for several brands in New York, including Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and American Eagle. But by her early 30s, Ms. Maldonado said, she had become uninspired by her career.

While traveling around the world for work, she liked hunting for unconventional souvenirs in hotel gift shops (her first purchase was a speckled ceramic pen holder in Japan). She started to wonder what it would be like to choose such items for shops at the Ace or Standard hotels.

In 2015, Ms. Maldonado, now 39, recalled thinking, “What if I start a modern gift shop?”

Soon after, she started a website, Yowie, that sold housewares, like ceramic cups and bowls. (When considering names for the website, yowie, an Australian word synonymous with yeti or Bigfoot, emerged as a favorite and stuck.) Ms. Maldonado soon quit her job at American Eagle to focus on the business. She moved to her native Philadelphia, where she hosted a series of Yowie pop-up shops before settling into a tiny store in the Queen Village neighborhood.

Recently, she moved the store again, to a much bigger space on the ground floor of a new Yowie hotel designed and co-owned by Ms. Maldonado. The hotel is set to open this summer in Philadelphia.

“My dream was to be connected to a hotel,” she said. “I didn’t know that would be my hotel.”

Rooted in Retail

The 13-room Yowie hotel, which will also have a cafe, was originally two rowhouses on South Street near the Delaware River that have been combined. On a warm day in February, Ms. Maldonado stood in a sunlit corner room between two bay windows as she scrolled through her design plan for the unfinished space, pointing to where the custom side tables, colorful rugs and artwork would go.

Ms. Maldonado described her style as minimal but cozy, with an emphasis on color. The hotel’s décor mixes furniture from BluDot, Hay and other brands with pieces from emerging makers, many of whom are local. It’s a strategy that’s also on display in the Yowie shop, where bold housewares from lines such as Dusen Dusen and Fredericks & Mae sit alongside handmade ceramic bowls and planters.

Naj Austin, who hired Ms. Maldonado to design a co-working space in Brooklyn (now closed), said her aesthetic is approachable and attainable. “It allows the person to want to bring that into their house, and it…