QueerCraft Co., the barely year-old custom-designed queer art and gaming accessories company, has been taking the convention circuit by storm. Co-founders Ron Taylor, Zhao Lu, and Tim aka K-Pup have made their grand entrance into the world of tabletop gaming with a wink and a nod to highlight a queer lens for LGBTQ gaymers and anyone who loves a good innuendo. I sat down with Ron in a quaint coffee shop in Hoboken, NJ (shout out to Hey Coffee People who let us shut down the place and for serving a mean cinnamon bun) where I got an up close and personal look at the beautifully handcrafted dice towers, shadowboxes, and customizable coasters that have been selling out everywhere from our very own Flame Con to local artisan markets. With 10,000 Maniacs and other 90s alt-rock icons scoring our conversation from the cafe speakers, Ron and I delved into topics ranging from exhausting corporate culture, dreams of becoming a queer Etsy for artists, and the thrills and fears of sticking to and creating from one’s values and actually watching it succeed. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Tell me the background of you, of your husband, how this whole thing got started.

Yeah, so my background. Grew up in Pennsylvania. Scranton. So like, a small town.

Dunder Mifflin.

Dunder Mifflin, yep. Like, about fifteen miles away from it in a really old coal mining town. So not much going on, pretty small. I started working in retail. Like ten, twelve years of retail. Dick’s Sporting Goods, I was a large part of that. Went from cashier to store manager, traveled around the East Coast just opening stores and things. So, I started off in a very corporate environment. I did have another small business for five years, so I had a little bit of experience with entrepreneurship. I kind of always wanted to do something. I was always kind of a bit of a rebel when I was a kid. You know, I never wanted to take the same path as everybody else. When I had that business, actually that’s when I met my husband [and co-founder, Zhao]. Really serendipitous in Asbury Park during pride. At a bar, you know, no swiping or anything.

That’s the dream.

Yeah, it was nice. Like, just met him on the dance floor, got his name and number, started texting. That was in June and then by end of September, I moved to New York and moved in with them because I was like, why not? Like, let’s see where this goes. So that was that. We’ve been together now for thirteen years. Married for ten. And, yeah, it’s been great. We’ve done a lot of growth together and been in Hoboken now for about ten years. That’s my background. I’m now in a digital marketing space. I went back to college in my mid-30s, also very non-traditional. I went to NYU to do a career pivot out of retail and into something a bit more nine to five, so I actually had weekends and holidays to myself. My husband, he came here, he’d just finished college in China, one of the more prestigious universities. And then he came here to Columbia for his master’s degree. And I think he was in his younger twenties, twenty-two, twenty-three. I didn’t know him at that time, but he tells me how just incredibly difficult it was for him. He spoke English, but not, you know, fluently. Had almost no money, really. So it was a really tough go for him. But he did well, got internships, ended up getting into the consulting field with like PWC, KPMG, that very corporate financial world and kind of still carried on that path. He’s worked for some startups since, always kind of been like a fintech space, like touching something related to finance. But he did start getting into more smaller companies, more startup companies, just for a different culture. A little bit looser, not the typical, you know, sixty-year-old white man running everything. He just wanted something a bit more diverse. And so that’s where he is now with a company that does financial ratings for business. He tells me [what he does], I’m like, “That sounds great.” (Laughs). But we definitely both have been in situations in our corporate environments or our jobs where we’ve been demoralized. Mine specific, I would say, abused heavily, like emotionally. That’s still kind of sticks with me, which is why I can’t ever imagine myself going back to a corporate job. If you want another story, that’s a whole other one. And my husband, same thing. You know, he’s been fired, for lack of a better word, and was told, he’s “not the type of person we want here.”

Not the type of person.

What does that mean?

Yeah.

Just things like that.

Instead of giving specifics over, you know, “We would like to see more of this.”

Nothing performance-based, was doing well. And then suddenly, you know, that was the reason. And even his day-to-day, he’s like, it’s hard to relate to anybody because, again, you’re with sales teams and right now it still is just mainly white men who go out and have drinks together and, like, have no idea what it’s like to be an immigrant, no idea what it’s like to be a minority. No idea how to even talk to somebody who is, right? So, just kind of feels isolated and again wants to just do something where he can be in more control and decide what that culture is. And hopefully for more employees in the future if things take off for us, which I hope they will.

How did gaming and then the art side of gaming come into play?

It wasn’t necessarily us having a dream to go into gaming. It was more looking at what was out there, what we could do locally that would maybe work for us, where we could get in. But we definitely wanted to keep it queer-focused. That was a goal. And that’s what we want to be all about. Elevating queer artists and also increasing the visibility of just queer culture like, “We’re here, we exist,” which I know sounds a little kitschy, but, in society today, the pendulum seems to be swinging in a direction of washing some of that away and not being as visible. So we wanted to make sure that we had a brand that was very clear what we were, QueerCraft. And it was about how do we reach people with that name, of people who would like utility products, products that actually they would use and found interesting. Our other co-founder [Tim/K-Pup] he’s in design, product design, but he’s also heavily into the gaming space. More video gaming, but also the tabletop gaming. He knows about the card games and things like that. Our original focus was on queer art, specifically. Not safe for work queer art because I want to be bold, I don’t want to shy away from queer sexuality and really just let people know that’s normal. Sex happens, people get naked and gay people do too. But we realized that was niche. So, while we still pursue that, we wanted to have something that was again, a bit more accessible, and we knew that there were some gaming cafes around here. One’s called Victory Point. There’s another one, not too far from here, called Brewdacity. We started realizing after researching, like, these communities are big, they’re highly engaged. Everybody knows everybody and they’re always on a lookout for new products and new items. It just kind of went in that direction after we realized that there was an opportunity there to reach that audience and grow from there.

With the the handcrafted element of it, like, you have your cardholders…

Can I show you some things?

Yes!

I wasn’t sure if you’d seen our products.

I looked on the website, so, you know, the website’s a website.

Let me show you what I got. And it’s interesting because that’s actually one of the challenges of the products we made. They’re not products that are just straightforward. There’s an element to them that you really have to see in person and play with. That’s why [at] the conventions, people really, really resonated with this. That was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Ron reaches into a bag and begins removing the first bubble-wrapped item: a wooden, hexagonal box with a medallion in the middle and little, engraved dog bones designed into the sides. It looked more like something you would buy to keep your jewelry clean and safe in.

So, our whole idea is personalization and fun with these products. This is a dice box that we make [it holds seven D&D-style dice]. This is our Pup series, are you familiar with the Pup community?

I was not.

It’s a fun community. It’s very, again, very close-knit and if you’re in the community you know everybody. It’s kind of considered on the side of a little bit of a kink community, but also just very fun. All of the ones I’ve met are very open, very welcoming. My cofounder is in the Pup community. He calls himself K-Pup, not my husband, but the designer.

We wanted to do a Pup series first [the series is currently being finalized], so we designed this kind of a variation of our initial box. We designed some bones to go on the side.We do these fun little images that are engraved around that are related to the culture, the coloring is related to it. These are the fun things. Everything comes with a counter that we hand make. So, if you’re playing magic, we made this so that people could play their cards and also keep track of their health points as they go. And then the inside cogs have little nods to gay and queer symbols as you go. But you can pop this out [the medallion], put it on the table, play with it. And, this is where we become a little cheeky, where like the product itself doesn’t scream sexual or not safe for work or edgy, but then you can put in these little medallions that customize it for you. So, “Paws off My Deck” is pretty standard, not too bad. “Let’s Slay.” This one was really popular. This is where people’s eyes were just like, they were laughing, but they were always like, “Oh my God, I need this.”

It’s beautiful. And it’s all magnetized, too.

That’s what we introduced. It’s kinda popular in the space. People like that closure system. It’s also very satisfying. When you aren’t using it or your dice are out, you can flip it over as a coaster. And that’s where we start getting that little wink, wink, nod, “But I’m a coaster. That’s not what I mean.” [The coaster reads, “Make Me Wet. (I’m a coaster)” with spouting water droplets]. You know? And then, like, you can have some sayings and start to get a little fun and innuendo-y. So “Crit Me Harder.” Crits are when you roll a  natural twenty, like the highest you can get it’s like a critical-type thing. So people in the environment know that. It’s just so funny because it was like they got the gaming aspect but also the wink aspect.

Yeah, that’s fantastic.

And then the last gaming item, because they kind of come in a set, you can buy them separately, but they all do go together. This is the Dice Tower.

Ron unwraps a tall, black box with swirling engravings and splashes of the colors of the rainbow.

This was Tim’s main product. I mean, it’s beautiful.

Is he the primary artisan?

He is, yeah. Tim is the product designer. Sometimes we’ll come up with ideas, but he really knows how to go in there and draw these from scratch, draw the schematics and print them out. So he’s the brain’s behind that.

And then does he do the woodworking or is this like…

We both do.We use a wood laser cutter. We upload the graphics, the schematics forward, it cuts it out of the wood we choose, and then we assemble it through by hand. It’s a little crazy. But if you’re playing D&D and you want a fair roll… [opens the box, unveiling the red felt inside] take your dice, put them in the top, and it bounces it around in there so it’s fair and then you have your results down here. So, again, you know, a roll, clean, a little bit of gay culture, Pride & Power [engraved] on the side. Cat fur everywhere. Because we have two cats.

That’s the most queer thing.

Right? Yeah. And this one [another medallion] was also super popular, “Roll Me Daddy.”

Of course.

People when they saw that they could like mix and match these different medallions and we had a couple ones with other sayings as well. They were just like, “This is so fun.”

Yeah, people love a customizable product.

Yeah. And it’s not the stuff that they see that’s mass-produced all the time. It’s not the same thing at every table. This is something that they stopped and looked at and like, they genuinely had fun. I’ve been in retail for all this time and I know when people come over just to feel like they have to. The smiles, and they would stay forever and just like play with it, and they’d call friends over. It made us feel like we were on to something that people really found interesting. Even though it was queer we had straight people who were completely like, “This is so much fun.” Sexual innuendo not just for the queer community. Everybody gets it.

It’s so fun to have a product that has a certain utility, but actually be able to make it something funny and joyful, so it’s not just serving its purpose. It’s doing a lot more and it has its own personality, which I think is really hard to accomplish sometimes.

A couple of people said that what they really appreciate is that we were walking that line between not safe for work, but also not porn. They thought we were right on that perfect line of like, “I could put this in my house, I could bring it to my friends. They’ll laugh at it, but not think I’m completely off the rails.”

On your website you talk about doing artist collaborations. Are there any ones coming up that you’re really excited about?

There are! Again, Tim, our designer, he’s really hooked up into the artwork community. Even though he does this with design and stuff, he really is an artist. So he’s reached out. We don’t have any completed yet, but we’re talking to one called TigerLion. He’s based in Mexico, but he has a huge reach, a huge fan base really around the globe. He goes to Japan to conventions. He goes internationally.

Does he come to New York Comic Con?

I don’t know if he’s ever been to New York’s Comic Con yet. But that’s where the collaboration comes in. A lot of these artists only do prints. Sometimes they’ll do books, but mainly print work. Our idea has been to take their print work, take the things that they’re doing that are just one dimensional, people can hang it on their on their walls or whatever, which is great. But take their existing work, not redesign it, not make something new, but take their existing work and turn it into these kind of 3D shadow box elements where it brings their art to life.

Ron takes out and shows me one of the shadow boxes.

You really can’t get this effect [the 3D is seriously dimensioning] just looking at the website. That’s really excellent.

I don’t touch the shadow boxes. I can’t do this. This is an original character that Tim created. He’s like our mascot.

But we do have a couple that we’ve created that are from other artists. We like to show them what we can do with their art. It’s been really exciting for them. We haven’t officially started with anyone, but we have an artist that I think we are going to represent his work. Kemoket, which is a Japanese [furry] convention in Japan. I don’t know much about it. But to your point, like, this particular artist doesn’t have a lot of reach in the U.S or in New York. So our relationship would be, let us make a really neat product for you out of your existing art, and then after that, we can collaborate. We can bring the product to our shows that we do at our conventions in the US, credit you as the artist, obviously, have them go to your site. But then you can get exposure up here. There’ll be like a profit-sharing like, you create the art, we create the product. It increases exposure for them and it also gives us access to their marketing channel, there are thousands of followers and things like that. That’s really one of the biggest challenges with opening a new company is building that market, building your customer base. So, our idea is to work for more artists that they get the benefit and we can get a similar benefit of exposure, really. That’s kind of what we’ working on. We have a couple other artists that we’re talking with and it should be a couple weeks or so before we actually get our first collaboration started. And they’re all queer artists as well. Not that we wouldn’t work with a non-queer artist, but our goal is really to elevate, give them access to more product types and variety, make their fans happier and just get them known throughout more areas. We definitely want to elevate their voices too.

I also saw on your website that there was a little thing about Etsy and censorship. Can you tell me what’s going on with that?

We’ve had a store on there twice and just inexplicably, we keep getting closed. And I don’t know why. They never give me an answer. I literally woke up in the morning and it’s like, “Oh, your store been closed in a violation of policy.” And I went on their website and it says, “If you get this email, it’ll clearly tell you what policy you violated.” Didn’t tell me. It says it’ll clearly tell you if it’s a permanent suspension or temporary. Didn’t tell me. So after a whole bunch of back and forth with their support, it was like, “This is a permanent closure. Looks like you violated some content policies” or whatever. At the time, we had only had these boxes on and I think we had just uploaded maybe one of the artworks that we had. Nothing that was exceptionally risqué, or even had just nods and winks. And that all was closed. Then we opened the other one up under a different name and within days, that one was closed. And so, I don’t know, like, I know they have some gay artists on there, but I’ve definitely heard going into the Reddit sphere and talking to other people that this is not uncommon for them to just close a store that they just feared for whatever reason. Maybe they don’t like it, maybe it’s just random. I don’t know. But it’s just odd that every time we try to get onto this platform that we really would love to be on and we actually got started getting a lot of sales of our deck boxes. It’s just not worth our effort anymore to think that we’re going to be closed down in a couple days. I don’t need to understand why it is what they’re doing, but it is kind of odd that we just keep getting shut down every time we go on there.

And not getting a specific reason.

Yeah. And our name is QueerCraft, so, again, not making any direct accusations. It’s just one of those things that I guess I’ll never know, but doesn’t seem to happen to a lot of other stores there.

Yeah. So it seems even more important that you’re starting these collaborations with other artists so that you can, in a way, be an Etsy for artists that may be getting shut down.

Yeah. I like that, “Etsy for artists.” I worked in digital marketing for a long time and the truth is, the traditional channels, you know, doing Google search or doing awareness ads on Instagram, it’s not for small businesses. They price you out, they gouge you, they charge you for things that are completely irrelevant. And it’s only worked when I worked at agencies and stuff. If it’s a company that spends tens of thousands or a million dollars a year, sure, maybe it works.

It’s like a drop in the bucket.

But when you’re trying to do it on, like a shoestring budget, it just doesn’t work. So reaching an audience for us was like, how do we do this effectively? The conventions were one. We’ll obviously get some traction there. But the artist collaborations, I think, made the most sense to us to really reach our mission. Elevating the artists, but also kind of increases the visibility of queer art and queer culture in general.

You’ve been doing well at the conventions. You sold out of some stuff at Flame Con.

Yeah, it was really… it was stupid. (Laughs) You know, you go into these things and you hope for the best, but you just in your mind, think that, “All right, let’s not have too high expectations.” If people at least stop and talk to us or take a card or buy something.

Like, we’ll take it.

And yeah, like, we had crowds around our Flame Con table. We sold out of a couple items. I think the dice roller, the dice tower we ran out of, very close to running out of the other things. People loved Tim’s artwork, the shadow boxes.  It was one of the first times in a while, I’m gonna sound like a depressive person, which I might be, it was one of the first times in a while that we were all happy. We were all ecstatic. That all this work and energy we put into it, people recognized and appreciated. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in the corporate world or done anything more structured in that kind of environment. But, you know, for people like me and Zhao and Tim/K-Pup, we put so much into our work and our work means so much to us. But when you’re in one of those other jobs, it rarely gets recognized. You rarely feel good about what you’ve done. And here it was something where all of us, seeing people laugh and smile and like, call their friends over and then buy a ton, it was  just really good that this hard work, this vision, people loved and appreciated and we hit just the right market. Flame Con was great, and then a week later, we did Jersey City Pride. And again, we were like, maybe Flame Con was a fluke. Maybe this won’t be the right audience for this. That was even better for us, really. We did more at Jersey City than we did at Flame Con. [We] had more products. And again, sold out of most of them. People would say, “I’ll come back, I’m going to bring a friend,” which, you know, in retail terms is “bye” and I won’t see you. And they’d be back in like 20 minutes. And I’d be like, “Oh my God, you came back!” They’d be like, “Yeah, and I brought my friends with me.” It was really fun and exciting to see people that happy about it.

That’s really a testament that you are onto something. When you have an inkling about something and a desire to just make whatever, like, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to land with people. So then when it does it’s so reaffirming and validating in so many ways. When your vision and what’s meaningful for you and all the time and effort that goes into it, then meets where people are at and what they’re wanting, and what they’re needing too, it’s really such a gorgeous thing.

It also stresses you out because then it’s like, oh shit, now I have to scale this somehow. Like, it’s mine to kind of fuck up. People do like this now and now I have to figure out a way to actually keep this going and reach these people again and I’m not sure if this would be one of your questions, but that’s where we’re struggling right now: can we go to a non-queer or [more] traditional market and sell this? We really want to go to holiday markets. We really want to go to artisans markets that are around the area. I’ll be honest, we’re a little hesitant and really just scared that it’s going to be an environment where we aren’t as well received. Where we are, maybe even, you know, told, hey, maybe don’t show these products and things like that. And it’s difficult, right? Because you want to be as proud as we think everybody else should be, but you still have this reality of am I going to stand out like a sore thumb next to somebody selling purses and somebody selling, like, you know, crocheted whatever, and then we’re in the middle with, Jayden. Our little guy [Erotic Butler shadowbox]. Are we going to stand out like crazy when we have a flag of him flying next to these people? We want to try one, we want to get into a more traditional market. Jersey City, I think, has a lot of holiday markets that they do. I think the environment here is more diverse. So we’re hoping that goes well. But, yeah, we’re not sure. We haven’t tested yet where we would be more accepted and where it would be more of like, “Why are you guys here?” So it’s a little scary thinking about that.

I think about NYCC where it could go either way. Like, you could stand out, but it also could just be part of the whole scenery. There’s all of this art of very scantily clad women everywhere. Like, there’s a lot of  sexuality in your face. 

To your point, that one would go well. I think there are a lot of anime conventions that do skew toward adults.

And I don’t know if you’ve been recently, but the scantily clad women are one, but there’s a lot of, like BL or Boy Love stuff they have now. A lot of scantily clad men and a lot of  known characters that are in these situations. But there are a few, like we were looking at one in Philadelphia called Animate!. We were reading all the rules and it started becoming like, you know, no innuendos… it came right after like, no adult content, no nudity, which we don’t show nudity. But it was going to this area of… families and family-friendly and there’s kids and I was like, okay, this one probably doesn’t sound like it’s for us. So, I think we have to do a lot of research. We have to kind of understand what it looks like now and be smart about it. But I do agree, in New York Comic Con, I think we’d probably fit in. For sure, yeah.

I would love to to see you guys in a huge venue like that.

We would too. Although Flame Con was much larger than I’d expected. I think I went years ago, maybe in 2016 or 2017. They were in Brooklyn. I don’t recall it being nearly that size. So this year, I was like, oh, wow, they have, multiple rooms booked, and all this kind of stuff. It was impressive to see how big it’s gotten. The nice thing about, you asked about why we chose gaming as our first kind of niche, the gaming comprised a lot of gaming conventions, specifically for D&D or tabletop games. Victory Point that’s local, we went to Brewdacity, that’s local. They were both very gay-friendly. Victory Point has an LGBTQ game night. Brewdacity, she [Jessica Butler-Lengal, owner/co-founder of Brewdacity] has said most of her clientele are of the queer community. She’s in the queer community, but she did kind of warn me that she’s in the environment. She’s like, “they’re not all like this.” She’s like, if you go to something [in] New York or elsewhere, like a lot of the people who play there tend to be,  not necessarily homophobic, but they tend to be people who aren’t as socialized that play these games. They don’t always get out, they don’t meet a lot of different people. So they don’t realize that, you know, screaming homophobic slurs to people is not okay anymore. Things like that. Not everyone’s going to be like this, but I still think going to some tabletop conventions, D&D conventions like that, I still hope that we’ll find an audience that appreciates it.

I hadn’t really thought about this, the difference between like, gay, LGBTQ gamers and more straight, hetero gamers. That social aspect is very different because I think we still imagine, like, especially straight men gamers, just being alone, on their headsets and they’re, you know, just playing by themselves, whereas with the queer community, it is more about the community and just doing fun things together.

Finding people like themselves because honestly, it’s still hard.

And the role-playing stuff in and of itself feels very queer and very fluid. You’re taking yourself out of your own reality and expanding your mind and your empathy and your imagination a bit for play.

And that’s like when I mentioned the Pup community. I think, really their whole reason for existing is they feel like a different person when they have their pup hood on. Like K-Pup, our cofounder. He has a personality all to his own when he’s working and when he’s ours. When he puts on his mask and he becomes K-Pup, he’s a completely different person. He’s just playful and silly and fun, and he’s actually the reason that we did get so much traction. He just drew people in. At Flame Con, specifically, a lot of Pups were there. It’s an interesting community. It’s a very fun community.

What other aspects of queer culture are you thinking of of delving into with your designs?

That’s a really great question about what’s next, because, and again, that’s why I said it’s ours to screw up right now. But there’s three of us. How much more, aside from these, can we design next? How far can we go? So I think at the moment we’re keeping with similar products, keeping similarly in gaming, but creating products that do represent a wider audience of the queer community. For example, I felt a little bad that at Jersey Pride, we did have a couple of people come over and [say] like, “Oh, you don’t have anything in the trans colors or in the trans visibility.” And I was like, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry we haven’t been able to do that yet.” But it’s one of those things. It’s three of us. It takes a lot of time. But we do [also] want to get into jewelry. A little overdone. But again, when you incorporate the material aspect of the wood, I’ve been seeing more wooden jewelry in places I go. But again, nothing queer-related. Nothing at all that speaks to us. So we’re thinking of transitioning some of these cogs that we have into earrings. We’ve noticed a huge increase of men, straight and otherwise, wearing earrings now. Again, because we’re limited, it’s like repurposing some of what we’ve made already to be a different product. We’re making pins. We have these cute little pins that are a little leather bear pin and a little pup pin. Super cute. In terms of that expansion we’re working on it. I’m trying to think of what else we have in the pipeline, but right now we’re just thinking of holiday season. And like, how can we make enough to hopefully, be at enough holiday markets [and] conventions to sell enough? I can’t say we have a huge pipeline at the moment, but I know we’ll come up with some and we’ll think of something. The shadow boxes, I think, are going to be our biggest expansion as we work with more artists, having a much wider variety of those to just sell customers, different themes. There’s Furry communities there’s, Bear communities. There’s obviously people of color that we have to incorporate. We’re trying to think of all these things about how do we represent these communities, so that they see themselves. All the different diversity that comes in the queer community. So, yeah, we have our work cut out for us. I think right now on the site, like, [we have a] few little novelties, like, we have a bottle opener. It has a very cute man on the front with his butt and it’s just called the “Bottoms Up.” Again, utility, but we can also add a little fun.

Are you still in the research mode for the holiday markets or have you decided?

We’ve decided on a few. So there is the Jersey City, I think it’s called JCAST. They have it off the Grove Street path a lot of weekends in October, November, December. So we have signed up for one of those in the beginning of October. We just have to wait and see if we’re accepted.

There’s an application process for these things?

Yes. All these things, you have to submit  a vendor application. There’s, of course, fees associated for spaces, which can run from a couple hundred to like, I’ve seen some from up to a thousand, which we haven’t done yet.

So we have signed up for one of those and then in Montclair, there are several handmade artisan goods type markets up until Christmas. So we’re signing up for one of those in November. And then depending how those go, we’ll continue. But again, we’re trying to find ones that are as much in the LGBTQ community as possible. So I know, and I  never knew this before, Boxers Bar in New York City, they actually have one day where they do a craft market inside.

Oh, that’s cool!

That’s a great match. Yeah. We’re definitely going to try to do that. And there’s another group, it’s a lesbian bar that they usually get together and do a holiday market, but they haven’t decided on their time or what’s going to happen yet.

In the city or in Jersey?

In the city.

Okay. Yeah. So it’s either the Cubby Hole or Gingers or something.

Yes, right? And they do one, but they haven’t really planned it yet. But Zhao, he’s a lot into our communication and reaching out. He’s done a ton of reaching out. So he’s in contact. They’re like, “Yeah, we’ll let you know when things are settled and we’ll get there.” We’re also trying to get in front of some influencers. Everyone has to get in front of influencers. But again, we have identified a lot of LGBTQ Magic players or D&D players who have YouTube channels or things like that, teaching people how to play. We’d love to get in touch with them and send them some products, genuinely. It’s like, we’re gonna send it to you, and if you love it, great. If you don’t, let us know what we can do, but if you’re comfortable, then give us a nod or show it. If you’re not, don’t do it. So that’s kind of what we’re trying to do right now.

Is there anything that I didn’t ask that you wanted to touch on?

I don’t think so. I think it’s really just the difficulty of doing this in this environment. The one thing I’m not proud of that we did was early, early on when we put our first products in Victory Point, we were under the QueerCraft name. And it’s really funny how I think maybe anybody in the queer community, maybe not everybody, but a lot, they don’t even realize that they have this, I wouldn’t say an internalized homophobia, but they have this, like, spider sense of, “Am I accepted?”  “Am I okay here?” “Am I going to be judged?” And so for a very short period of time, we were like, well, if it’s going to be in a place that’s not exclusively gay, let’s call it something else. So we had this other brand name called Ludi Manus and we started selling it under that brand name. And like, after a couple… I was like, this is stupid. That’s not why we made this brand. If someone doesn’t want to buy our product because it says QueerCraft, like, fuck them. We don’t want them to buy our product then. So, we went back to just being like, this is silly. We’re QueerCraft, we’re in your store, if you don’t want to sell it, that’s up to you. So we really had to embrace that and get over that fear of talking to people about it. It’s still going to be there. That’s why we’re still scared about some of the holiday markets. You don’t want to be called out or made to feel less than because we’re not meeting the expectations of everybody else. My husband again, is contacting a lot of gaming stores in New York and a lot of gaming groups. Are we going to have a conversation that isn’t as fun and friendly, that is a little bit demoralizing. You kind of have to get over that, and toughen up and just push through it and say, it’ll happen and that’s fine as long as we get more yeses, and I think we will than no’s, that’s a good thing. That’s the battle I think that we have ahead of us is just finding the people and the companies out there that will embrace this and not not shy away from it.

Yeah. We all eventually do. When you’re doing something that is you and meaningful to you, the people who it’s not for just kind of fall away and the right people then start coming in. It’s hard in a capitalist world where the idea is, “Well, we need to make things as palatable to all people as possible to maximize profits.” And it’s kind of antithetical to a lot of things.

I don’t have a lot of faith in people anymore, but part of me does think that if you do stick to your values and what you stand for, I still think that can be good business. I still think that when you try to attract everybody, you don’t attract anyone. You don’t stand out, you just… meh. But I like to think that if you do target a group that you know needs to be uplifted, a group that needs to be visible, I really think that’ll throw our people to us, and it’ll really make us stand out and become something that they want to support and that they want to continue to support. So I really hope it is good business. I hope that it can be a model for other companies. Hopefully the pendulum continues to swing, and I know sometimes it goes one way and then eventually it goes back the other, so hopefully we’ll be in a better place at some point.

All we can do is just, like you said, stick to our values, keep doing the thing.

Yeah. And I will say, this isn’t just for queer people. At Flame Con, there was one person I remember, she was a single older woman. I’m horrible at ages. She could have been anywhere from, like, fifty to eighty-two. I have no idea. But she came through and you look at her and you wouldn’t think anything other than like, oh, she’s somebody’s aunt. And she looked through. We had  one of these things that says, “I’ll bottom for nap 20s.” [It] means when you roll a twenty on your first roll. And she looked at that and she just started laughing, and she’s like, “That’s so funny, my friends would love that.” And she bought it. It really had nothing to do with her being a part of the queer community or not. It was just really funny to her. So that was funny to see that anybody can see the fun in it, the enjoyment in it, but at the same time, especially the queer community appreciates the designs that we do that are more queer-oriented and the coloring that we use, stuff like that. It features more than just the queer community. Speaks to a lot of people, I think.

Because people just are people and they get it when they get it, you know?

One of the hardest things I have noticed, though, is these things, these products, they’re like $45, $35. They’re price points that people aren’t used to paying for these products. If you go into a gaming store, like one of the ones I mentioned, or Amazon, you can find a deck holder for $10 and they’re, you know, whatever, they’re utilitarian. But people do like to buy, if you are in that gaming community, you have twenty decks. And you keep on buying the next one, the next one. And so you don’t really want to pay a lot of money for a box because you want to spend that on the cards or the products. So we haven’t exactly hit this yet, but there is a sense of like, why am I spending $45 on a box? Really, it should be more expensive for our cost of assembling it. I met another crafts person at an event we went to called Otakon, which was in… I forget where it was.

A major city somewhere in United States.

Yes! We went there and we saw another vendor who was making these beautiful mugs out of porcelain, painted. And I bought one when we were talking to her about being a vendor of handmade stuff, and I was like, I’m gonna get this one of Totoro and I wasn’t looking at the prices. It was like $100. I was like, “Oh shit, I’m gonna get in trouble for this one.” Still bought it. But we started talking about the pricing, I was like, how do you do here? A hundred dollars is honestly, expensive to buy a mug. And she was explaining, like, honestly, being with these other artists, you know, kind of wink wink, it’s hard because you can be next to somebody, who says they’re an artist, and they’re selling, something that’s mass produced. Maybe they created it, but then they easily could send it over to any other manufacturing country and get a thousand back for like pennies and then sell them. And she’s like, it is hard to sell these types of items when people don’t understand that I sit at home and I make these. And I paint every single one myself I make every single one myself. She said, “Once I get people to understand that, they do stop and purchase.”

Once you realize that it’s special, a lot of times people are more willing to pay that.

And, I think about Comic Con again, there are so many artists who make like…

If I see another fucking enamel pin, I’m gonna… 

(Laughs) No, but I was gonna say, in between, there are, like the actual artists who make, like… one year I saw people who make D&D tables, like, customized, really beautiful furniture.

Actual furniture. I’ve seen those!

Clearly, there is a market for it and not everyone is going to be able to afford things like that. But it is important to price your items appropriately, one, for the sustainability of your business and your ability to create what you’re creating. The right people will, once again, who really appreciate it and understand what’s behind it will buy it. Like, the money is out there.

Yeah. Just very early, they have to understand that. And that’s why we changed our taglines to Sexy, Sassy, and Seriously Unique. Trying to figure out what the word is to get across to people quickly that these are not mass produced items. And of course, once we get them over and we talk about how they’re laser cut, all assembled by hand, then it starts to resonate that I’m not going to find this somewhere else. And it becomes much more easy. But, you know.

But getting to that point…

That is the more challenging part, yeah.

Yeah, when it’s so easy, just go online and see a thing and put it in your shopping cart and not think too much about it.

You had mentioned, actually, this didn’t translate to you necessarily online. Like, you didn’t quite get the all the qualities of it. So one of our other focuses for channels is getting into retail environments, these game stores and stuff. Finding a way to display these products in a way that people get it, they understand that these medallions can be changed and customized.

Yeah, they could touch it and play with it.

Exactly. So we’re looking at ways to get some fixtures or display fixtures that we can put with gaming stores that want to show our product so that it can be properly displayed and played with. Because the ones that we have partnered with so far, they just put like, one on their shelf and they don’t talk about it, they don’t show it. It’s like, nobody gets it. So we have to do some work with retailers to have a display that tells the story. They’re busy. Sometimes there’s one person on staff. They have a hundred products. They don’t have time to go over them and show them this. So something that can really tell the story when we’re not there, it’s probably our biggest pain point of these things. They’re amazing, but you have to be able to tell the story about it before people click. So we’re figuring out how to do that in a way that’ll work for us.

How long has QueerCraft been a thing?

We incorporated as QueerCraft, LLC in December of last year. We didn’t have any real products at the time. Our first convention that we actually sold products at was Flame Con. That was our first time ever debuting our product to anybody. Before that, I sold a few deck boxes on Etsy before they were like, (head cutting sound effect). So really it’s been just a matter of months since we’ve been actually getting our products customer-ready. And that’s why I’m telling you like, Zhao is our kind of like finance and marketing. He’s like, “What are we going to do this holiday season? We need to do gift guides. How can we get gift guides?” I was just like, should we slow this roll a little bit? Because what if we do get a hundred orders like, I’m gonna literally be sitting there at night, like 24 hours a day just putting it together. Like, we need to figure out a way to make this more scalable first. He’s like, “That’s a problem we’ll talk about down the road.” We have a lot of friends that’ll sit with me and assemble these things.

Yeah, you’ll get like twelve bottles of wine.

Yep. Might send you an email, “Wanna stop over for some wine and assembling boxes with us?” (Laughs). If that’s a problem, it’s a good problem to have.

If you want to support QueerCraft and buy their fun and gorgeous products for your next table top gaming gathering needs, head to their website or visit them in person as they expand into game stores, cafes and LGBTQ boutiques around the US and internationally in Puerto Vallarta and Tokyo. They will be sponsoring the inaugural NerdOut nightlife event on October 22, 2025 in NYC, organized by NYC Gaymers, Shane Cherry and dedicated to LGBTQ+ players of Magic the Gathering. They will also have representatives at Kemoket to launch the brand in Japan in January. For more information on which LGBT- friendly conventions and gaymer gatherings you can find them at, you can find more updates and information on their Instagram here. As a special bonus for GeeksOUT readers, QueerCraft is offering an exclusive discount code for your upcoming holiday shopping! Use GEEKSOUT20 for 20% off of orders of $50 or more. This code is valid until 1/1/2026, one use per person. Let the gaymes begin!