Sweet Jojo Mahjong grew out of our family’s experience building Sweet Jojo Designs, a home and nursery brand that we have operated for more than 20 years. Our founder, Jodi, fell in love with mahjong and saw an opportunity to bring the same design-focused approach into the game.

We launched Sweet Jojo Mahjong with the goal of creating beautifully designed, high-quality mahjong products that still felt approachable and accessible. We offer unique, collectible designs at a price that makes it possible for customers to own more than one set.

We also approach mahjong much more like a lifestyle and home decor category than simply a game. Our tiles and mats are designed to coordinate, feel special on the table, and reflect different personalities, seasons, and styles.

A large amount of our customer discovery happens digitally, particularly through social media, paid advertising, affiliates and Mahjong instructors, word of mouth, and customers seeing our products within the Mahjong community.

Where we’d like to continue growing is organic discovery. We want more people to find Sweet Jojo when they’re already searching for something specific—whether that’s “aqua blue Mahjong tiles,” “coastal Mahjong set,” or simply “best American Mahjong tiles.” We have such a visual and varied product assortment that search, Pinterest, social discovery, and eventually AI-assisted shopping all have a lot of potential for us.

One thing we’ve definitely handed more of to AI is the first draft of marketing content. We use it to help brainstorm ad copy, email subject lines, social captions, product descriptions, SEO language, and different ways to communicate promotions. It makes the team much faster because we aren’t starting every piece of content from a blank page.

Where we still rely heavily on people is the creative direction and brand judgment. AI can give us 20 ideas very quickly, but it doesn’t necessarily know which one actually feels like Sweet Jojo. The final product selection, collection concepts, visual styling, messaging, and understanding of what our Mahjong customer will respond to still require a human eye. We’ve found AI works best as an assistant rather than the person making the final decision.

Definitely. Customers are much more informed by the time they reach us. They’ve often already seen a collection on Instagram, watched someone play with it, compared several brands, looked at reviews, or searched for a very specific style before they ever visit the site or contact us.

We’re also paying much more attention to AI discovery. People are increasingly asking tools like ChatGPT questions such as, “What are the best American Mahjong tile brands?” or “Where can I find coastal Mahjong tiles?" That changes how we think about our website. Product pages can’t just be pretty; they need clear descriptions, FAQs, product specifications, collection names, reviews, and useful information that search engines and AI systems can understand. Our site currently has that kind of structured information around things like materials, product categories, American Mahjong compatibility, and coordinating accessories, and we want to continue strengthening it.

We do see customers are starting to arrive directly from ChatGPT recommendations, which is really exciting to see.

I would tell them to build a recognizable brand first and then use AI to make the business and processes faster, but not to replace what makes the brand recognizable.

For the next 12 months, I’d focus on creating genuinely differentiated products, producing a steady stream of good original photography and video, building relationships with instructors and customers, collecting reviews, improving product pages and SEO, and making sure your website clearly explains exactly what you sell. I’d also start thinking beyond traditional Google search and optimize content for the kinds of very specific questions people are now asking AI assistants.

I’d use AI aggressively behind the scenes for research, organization, content variations, analysis, customer-service drafting, and repetitive marketing work.

What I’d ignore is the pressure to use every new AI tool simply because it exists. You can waste an enormous amount of time chasing platforms and automation. If it doesn’t save meaningful time, improve the customer experience, or help sell the product, we probably don’t need it.

And especially in a category as visual and community-driven as Mahjong, I would not outsource the personality of the brand to AI. AI can make you faster. It shouldn’t make you look and sound like everyone else.