Launching a Physical Card Game

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March 2024 to March 2025

After a few months of running our 21 Questions app in late 2023, Mehul and I started seeing some early traction. People were actually using it. We had an idea, what if we turned this into a physical card game?

Neither of us had ever designed or manufactured a physical product before, but we were curious enough to give it a shot.

Finding our angle

We decided our first deck would be targeted at couples. We started by researching competitors like "We're Not Really Strangers" and "Substance" to understand what resonated with their audiences. After a few weeks of mocking up designs in Figma, we felt ready to find a manufacturer.

The manufacturing hunt

We turned to Alibaba and started DMing manufacturers. What followed was weeks of back-and-forth conversations, comparing quality, pricing, packaging, and minimum order quantities across 10+ options. We eventually partnered with Maggie Ke at Guangzhou Sese Printing Co., Ltd.

Then came more rounds of prototypes, feedback, and revisions. Once we finally landed on a design we were happy with, we placed our first bulk order: 500 units.

The reality of physical products

A few weeks later, the shipment arrived at my apartment via cargo ship. Fourteen boxes. Each weighing 45 pounds. I had to haul 600 pounds of cards upstairs lol. Thankfully, my apartment offered storage units, so I rented one out.

While we waited on prototypes and shipments, we weren't sitting idle. We bought the domain 21.cards, set up a TikTok shop and Shopify store, and booked a product photoshoot with Soona, a local Minneapolis company.

Going to market

We marketed the same way we marketed our app, through TikTok and Instagram. Our first orders came in early 2025. Over the next few months, we sold around 100 decks at $25 each.

The hard decision

After going through the fulfillment process, we came to a realization: this was fun, but it probably wasn't worth the time and effort given our full-time jobs. We made the hard call to shut it down and pivot to something that made more sense for us.

We didn't become millionaires from physical card decks. But we learned a ton about supply chain management, product design, marketing, and fulfillment. Most importantly, it was a fun experiment, a side quest that taught us what works and what doesn't.