Beginning with the Terra Oracle Deck release at the start of 2020, Third Age Market has become a producer and retailer of underground creative projects in Louisville, KY. Alongside one of my best friends and business partner Lindsey Cummins, I’ve spent the past two and a half years developing Third Age Market (3AM) from a late night dream to a company with products being cherished around the world.

We have done every bit of work (besides the actual printing and production) required to build this business, as we believe the experience gained by learning to make something out of nothing is invaluable, and will only propel us further in the future.

A huge lesson I learned early on while growing 3AM was that while you can make quality products and sell them at a decent level, it is imperative that you display them marketably. Marketing matters. Website design matters. Packaging and periphery items such as stickers and thank-you cards matter. You have to build personality around your brand, or else your user base will categorize you as “just another tarot card deck”.

Being empathetic with your user-base is, in my opinion, the best way to understand which parts of your project are successful and which need to be adjusted. The lessons I’ve learned from building Third Age Market have directly benefited to the success of every project I’ve been a part of since.

Design Tools used: Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Figma

Other tools used: Google Drive, Quickbooks, Google Analytics, Trello, and a plethora of other business and marketing tools