HipHipMahjong! did not begin with a business plan.
It began with Christmas.
And one very specific problem.
I wanted a Christmas mahjong tile set.
Not just red and green tiles. Not something vaguely festive. I wanted a set that felt like Christmas. The kind of tiles you would pull out every December along with the ornaments, stockings, and all the other things your family looks forward to year after year.
I searched.
And searched.
I could not find one anywhere, Christmas Mahjong sets simply didn't seem to exist.
So my husband and I decided to make it.
At the time, we had no idea that decision would turn into HipHipMahjong!
It Started With Rackin’ Rudolph
We designed what would eventually become our first Christmas mahjong tile set, Rackin’ Rudolph.
My husband brought the designs to life, and together we obsessed over the details. We wanted the tiles to feel festive and fun while still respecting the game we loved.
When we finally had something we were excited about, I shared it on Instagram.
We were not expecting what happened next.
More than 200 people signed up wanting a set.
Suddenly, the Christmas mahjong tiles we could not find anywhere were something other people had been searching for too.
There was our answer.
Maybe this was bigger than one set of Christmas tiles.
From One Mahjong Set to HipHipMahjong!
HipHipMahjong! grew from there, but the idea behind it never really changed.
We wanted to create mahjong tiles that made people excited to play. Tiles for Christmas, Halloween, birthdays, Easter, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, patriotic celebrations, and the occasions that give us an excuse to gather around a table.
And eventually, tiles that did not need an occasion at all.
We began designing mats, racks, pushers, shufflers, bags, and other mahjong accessories to create an entire table rather than simply a set of tiles.
But we never wanted to change the game itself.
We love getting creative with the details, especially the jokers, dots, flowers, and personality of a set, while keeping recognizable elements of traditional American mahjong. Craks still look like craks. Bams are green. Dragons and flowers are identifiable.
The goal has always been to bring our personality to mahjong without losing what makes mahjong, mahjong.
Why Our Mahjong Tiles Are Hand Painted
As HipHipMahjong! grew, we also made decisions about what kind of company we wanted to be.
One of those decisions was to continue creating hand painted mahjong tiles.
We love the dimension, character, and craftsmanship that hand painting brings to a set. It takes longer, and it is more complicated. When you are creating detailed seasonal and specialty mahjong designs in bulk, it certainly is not the easiest route.
But easy was never really the point.
We wanted to make tiles we would want to own ourselves.
We Never Wanted to Make Just Mahjong Products
Somewhere along the way, we realized we were not really designing around mahjong.
We were designing around moments.
The Christmas set gets unpacked every December.
The birthday tiles come out when someone you love is celebrating.
The Thanksgiving set is on the table while something is cooking in the kitchen.
Friends come over for what was supposed to be one game and suddenly it is hours later.
Someone learns to play because her mother played. A grandmother teaches a granddaughter. A group of women who barely knew each other becomes a group chat that never stops talking.
Mahjong has a funny way of doing that.
The tiles may bring everyone to the table, but what happens around it is the part that matters.
That became the heart of HipHipMahjong!
These are the moments.
Growing Beyond the Tiles
What started with one Christmas mahjong set eventually became something we never could have predicted from that first Instagram post.
HipHipMahjong! grew into seasonal and year round tile sets, coordinating mahjong mats, racks, pushers, shufflers, accessories, lessons, leagues, events, and a physical space in the St. Louis area where people can actually come together and play.
Watching HHM grow from an idea inside our home into boxes filling a warehouse has been surreal.
But some of our favorite parts have nothing to do with the number of boxes.
It is seeing one of our sets on someone else’s Christmas table. Seeing a group play on Birthday Mahj for a friend’s birthday. Seeing families give our tiles as gifts. Seeing people build traditions around something we created.
And hearing customers say, “We get this set out every year.”
That is exactly what we hoped would happen.
A Family Business From the Beginning
HipHipMahjong! is also very much a family business.
My husband and I built it together.
There have been late nights, samples everywhere, boxes everywhere, designs that went through more versions than we care to count, launches that sold faster than we expected, and plenty of moments when we looked at each other and wondered how one Christmas tile set turned into all of this.
We have learned as we have grown. We have made mistakes. We have changed things when we knew we could make them better.
And we still get genuinely excited when a new design finally arrives and we open the first box.
That part has not changed.
The Next Chapter of HipHipMahjong!
We have a lot more planned.
More tiles. More tables. More reasons to gather.
But no matter how much HipHipMahjong! grows, we never want to lose the reason it started.
We could not find the mahjong tiles we wanted for our own table, so we created them.
Then we discovered thousands of other people wanted something special for their tables too.
So here we are.
Still designing. Still playing. Still finding reasons to celebrate.
And still believing that the best part of mahjong has never been the tiles themselves.
It is who is sitting across the table.
Because these are the moments.