Since I was 10 years old, I’ve been collecting and flipping Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Magic: The Gathering cards — long before I ever thought of TCG Empire as a real business. I liked spending time with other collectors, digging through old booster boxes, and the challenge of buying a card at one price and selling it at another to see if I’d read the market right.
In 2024, I opened TCG Empire in Corbin, Kentucky, a small town of about 8,000 people in the foothills of the Appalachians. After years of watching local collectors drive hours to find a real card shop, I wanted to build one close to home. Today, TCG Empire is still a small operation with a team of fewer than 10, but that close-knit scale is what makes it work. It’s a gathering space for our community and a chance to turn something I genuinely care about into a living.
The shop did well from the start. But like many small-town businesses, I wasn’t reaching many collectors far beyond Corbin, and I didn’t have the budget to run national ads or build a big e-commerce operation on my own. I kept looking for a way to put our inventory in front of a bigger audience without betting the whole business on it.
Everything changed in September 2025 when I listed TCG Empire on Temu. The growth that followed transformed almost every part of my business. Within months, the business had taken off — we sold over 100,000 items on Temu, which soon accounted for more than 60% of our sales, leading us to hire four more employees and expand into an 8,000-square-foot warehouse. And it still feels like we’re just getting started.
Here are four of the most important lessons I took away from that ride, and how they can apply to any founder trying to turn a passion into a sustainable business.
Start With What You Already Know Better Than Almost Anyone
TCG Empire only exists because of the 28 years that came before it. When you’ve spent over a decade learning the ins and outs of a market, you develop instincts that can’t be replicated with research alone. I know which sets collectors are chasing, which ones are oversaturated, and how to price a bundle so it actually moves. I also know that the collectibles market is more popular than ever. In fact, a report from Grand View Research projected the global collectibles market to grow from $335.7 billion this year to $535.5 billion in 2033.
Before turning a hobby into a business, look hard at what you already understand deeply. That kind of lived knowledge is one of the biggest advantages a small business owner can have, and it costs nothing to acquire if you’ve already put in the time.
If you can’t explain why you know your category better than the next person with a similar idea, spend more time learning before you spend money launching. The better you understand your product, the more confidently you can price it, talk about it, and stand behind it when customers have questions.
Choose Channels That Bring Customers to You
For small sellers, one thing matters more than almost anything else early on: your time and your cash are limited, so my advice is to choose sales channels with built-in demand that can speed up growth in a way that traditional advertising can’t.
The fastest way to see whether your product resonates with audiences is to put it in front of people already shopping for something like it.
When I first opened TCG Empire, I did what a lot of small business owners do: I built a website and hoped the customers would come find me. Some of them did, but reaching collectors outside of Corbin turned out to be slower than I expected.
I’d been looking for a way to reach a bigger audience without betting the whole business on paid ads. When I heard Temu was opening its Local Seller Program to small U.S.-based shops, it felt like the right channel to test: low enough risk to try, big enough reach to matter if it worked. I also read that 91% of small business owners say e-commerce platforms are helping drive sales. So, I figured instead of trying to pull customers toward my brand, I should put my inventory in front of millions of people already shopping.
What I noticed was that smaller sellers seemed to get visibility based on genuine shopper interest — not just ad spend or how much you’d already built up on the platform. For a shop like mine, that mattered. It meant I wasn’t competing on marketing budget; I was competing on product. That helped us reach customers we wouldn’t have accessed through our own storefront alone.
Build Capacity Before Demand Outruns You
The hardest call I made wasn’t hiring or signing a lease. It was deciding when the growth was real enough to bet on.
As I mentioned above, within the first month on Temu, 60% of our revenue was coming from the platform, and orders were already outpacing what my original setup could handle. I had a choice: hold back and risk losing momentum, or move fast and risk over-committing.
I moved fast. That’s the decision behind the four new hires and the 8,000-square-foot warehouse I mentioned earlier. It wasn’t a comfortable bet, but by then I had enough evidence to justify it. The lesson I’d pass on: don’t wait until you’re drowning to build capacity, but don’t build ahead of measurable demand either. Know the difference between a spike and a shift. For us, 60% of revenue in 30 days was a shift.
Today we’re shipping up to 1,500 bundles a day out of that warehouse. But the decision that made it possible wasn’t the lease. It was reading the numbers correctly before signing it.
Online Growth Can Strengthen Your Storefront
If you have a physical location, my advice is to treat online and offline as the same business: online drives discovery, and the storefront builds loyalty.
When I first listed TCG Empire on Temu, I assumed I was now running two businesses: the shop in Corbin and an online operation. That didn’t last long.
Almost immediately, collectors began driving hours to visit the shop in Corbin. Some had ordered on Temu and wanted to see where their bundles came from. Others discovered us through a friend’s shipment. We now see visitors from across Kentucky and even from out of state.
The online business introduced the storefront to people who otherwise wouldn’t have heard about us. Each shipment became an invitation, and Corbin became a destination for avid trading card collectors.
Customers want to know there are real people behind the brand, and we have a place for them to walk into. The ones who care most about your category will show up.
A Hobby Is Worth Betting On
Trading cards stopped being just a hobby the day I stopped treating TCG Empire like one. I started treating it like the business my customers already believed it was.
If you know your product, meet customers where they already are, choose channels that give you real visibility even as a small player, and build the operation to support the demand you’re creating, a passion project can become something you didn’t plan for.
A few weeks after we went live on Temu, a collector drove in from out of state — he’d ordered a bundle online and wanted to see the shop. That wasn’t something I’d built a strategy around. It just happened because the online business introduced us to people we never would have reached from Corbin on our own.
Joshua Howell is the founder of TCG Empire, a trading card retailer based in Corbin, KY. Operating both a brick-and-mortar store and an e-commerce platform on Temu, TCG Empire sells cards from different franchises, including Pokémon, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Magic: The Gathering.
