What we're building
Merit exists because that particular magic — a table full of people who didn't know they needed each other — deserves objects that honor it. Little works of art worthy of display. Conversation starters. Sets you're proud to bring out and just as happy to leave out.
We make pieces meant to be passed down. Played with for years, held by people you love, kept long after the tiles have worn smooth.
We're two moms who found community in this game and never got over it.
What we made
Every tile in the Merit collection was designed as a work of art before it was designed as a game piece. The suits drawn from botanical illustration and fine art reference. The palette pulled from the kind of rooms you don't want to leave. The weight, the finish, the way they sit in your hand — considered from the beginning.
This is not a set you tuck away between games. It lives on your shelf, on your coffee table, in the room where people gather.
We made it that way on purpose.
Meet Merit's Founders
Arkansas to Virginia — nearly 1,200 miles by road — two time zones and one idea that refused to stay small.
We met the way a lot of good things happen now: online, unexpectedly, because someone saw something on a facebook post on a Mahjong group in a stranger's response and decided to say something. It was kismet. One conversation became many. A creative collaboration became a partnership. And in February 2026, it became Merit.
The distance has never really felt like distance. That's the thing about building something around a game that was always about bringing people to the same table — you start to believe it. We're living proof of our own thesis.
A note about the game itself
Mahjong has been played for centuries. It was born in China, refined across generations, and carried by communities around the world who kept it alive because it was worth keeping. We don't take lightly that we are building a business around it.
Merit is committed to honoring that history — not as a formality, but as a practice. That means acknowledging where this game comes from, supporting the communities that have always been its stewards, and making sure that as mahjong grows in North America, the culture at its roots grows with it.
We are honored to play a game carried this far, with this much love, by this many hands. And to honor the people who came before us.