HOSCHTON — Shelly Gephart wanted to have tiki torches for the dinner party she was planning, but there wasn’t a good way to keep them upright on her deck.

"We put them in pots but they were used as swords by my sons," she said jokingly.

So she asked her husband to go to the store to find some way to fasten them safely to the deck, but he came home empty handed.

"He looked online, he looked at Home Depot and Walmart," Gephart said. "And I thought, I can’t be the only mom who has this problem."

So she and her husband, Joel, came up with the MuddHook: a black metal universal pole mount that people can attach to their decks to hold anything from umbrellas to flags to the tiki torches she wanted to have for her dinner parties outside.

It took some time to design, but with her husband’s landscape management background and a couple of rough sketches, they came up with a product that they can use on their back porch.

"The first one was functional but unattractive. But we knew it would work," Shelly Gephart said.

Since they created it, they’ve traveled as far as Las Vegas to show the patented product and found some sellers who will travel around to market the product.

So far, they have sellers in several Midwestern states — Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan — and some in the Southeast.

"We’ve been doing home shows all over the country and we do craft fairs locally," Shelly Gephart said. "It’s been out on the market for six months ... and we’ve already got stores placing orders now for January through December of next year, because once Christmas is over, they’ll clear the shelves and put spring items out."

Though the MuddHooks are starting to take off, the Gepharts aren’t keeping all the profits for themselves.

"I’ve been battling medullary cancer for six years and a portion of the proceeds go to medullary cancer research," Shelley Gephart said.

Medullary cancer is a type of cancer that attacks a person’s thyroid, which is a large endocrine gland located in the neck, according to the National Cancer Institute.

In the meantime, the Gepharts are looking for ways to improve their product. They’ve started making the hooks into what they call "rail art" by adding designs to the hooks, such as lighthouses and animals.

"We have a friend who had a moose put on hers for her cabin," Shelly Gephart said.

To find out more about MuddHooks, visit www.muddhooks.com.