In 2023, between senior leadership roles, I did what designers tend to do when they have free time: I found a problem that was bothering me and started designing toward a solution. The problem was specific — Commander format trading card players needed a deck box built around a standard card sleeve, and nothing on the market got it right. Every existing option forced a compromise between sleeve compatibility, portability, and aesthetics.
What started as a personal design exercise became a company. I designed the product, validated it with the community, sourced manufacturing, built the brand, launched direct-to-consumer and wholesale channels, and sold the business — all within two years.
The trading card accessories market is competitive and deeply community-driven. Players are skeptical of brands that feel commercial or opportunistic. Standing out required two things: a product that genuinely solved a real problem better than anything else available, and a brand that felt like it came from inside the community — not like something being sold to it.
With no outside capital and no team, every decision had to count. Product design, brand identity, e-commerce UX, marketing, operations, customer support — all of it landed on one person.
I started with the actual problem. I prototyped relentlessly — testing sleeve clearances, lid mechanisms, material durability, and form factor variants. I didn't ship until the product solved the problem better than anything else. User-centered design applies to physical products just as much as digital ones.
The brand came next. I wrote the copy, designed the visual identity, and made a deliberate choice to build Showcase Deck Box around a community-first voice — playful, direct, honest, and clearly written by someone who actually plays the game. The hashtag #deckpics became an organic community signal. Players shared their setups. The brand felt like it belonged to the community, not above it.
I built the Shopify storefront UX from scratch, optimizing for conversion while keeping the experience aligned with the brand tone. I managed wholesale outreach to specialty retailers, fulfillment operations, and customer support — building every function of the business as if I were designing a system, because that's exactly what it was.
"I think like an operator, not just a designer. I understand what it means to be responsible for an entire product — from the physical object to the customer experience to the business model. When I advocate for users in a large organization, I do it with a full understanding of the tradeoffs involved."
Showcase Deck Box grew from a design exercise to a retail-distributed consumer brand with a loyal community and a successful acquisition. Misty Mountain Gaming acquired the brand in April 2025, recognizing the product quality, community equity, and operational infrastructure that had been built.
The exit validated the core thesis: if you solve a real problem for a real community, authentically and well, the business follows. That's true for a $30 deck box and a $30 million enterprise software platform. The principle scales.
This chapter also gave me something I couldn't have gotten inside a large company: direct accountability for every outcome. No handoffs. No diffusion of responsibility. Just the work and the result. I came out of it a better design leader — more rigorous about tradeoffs, more confident about advocating for investment in research and craft, and more effective at explaining design decisions in business terms.