Back in 2022, Cyan was very, very into a game called Disco Elysium. The story centered around Kim Kitsuragi and Harry DuBois, a pair of detectives in the land of Elysium. Created by ZA/UM, it was an unexpected hit.

Cyan himself hit upon an idea: How about a pin in Cyan’s style, that was reversible? Bonus points for it also glowing in the dark. He sketched it up, and it looked something like this:

The catch? Pins aren’t cheap to make, and Cyan had struggled with shipping out the pins before. The shipping out wasn’t the problem; the shipping time was. In the era of Amazon post pandemic, people were expecting packages in a week within their country, and 3 weeks globally. From his country, mail could take 3 months, and no one was having it. Bringing in Steph solved the shipping problem: being US based, packages would arrive faster. The beginnings of Stuck were born.

That left bankrolling the pin. Originally the plan was to use Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform, to raise funds for the pin. However, when mentioned in a Disco Elysium server, the folks who were officially involved with the game said no. It didn’t help that it was a month or two after Brandon Sanderson had broken Kickstarter records with the highest funded campaign ever created. We were told no to Kickstarter.

So we pre-sold the pins, using Steph’s exisiting Etsy shop, Art by Queen of Hearts. Most of her first 100 sales were the pins. The pin was successfully funded!

And when it came in, it was gorgeous. Amazing quality, finely printed, and it glowed! Of the 100 pins received, only 6 qualified as B grades, leaving us 94 perfect pins. That’s a great rate for A grade pins.

After the first 50 or so pins sold, we decided we needed a shop for just our merch. Steph’s shop worked, but Steph was a glass artist, not a pin seller, and it was a little mood whiplash to see glass flowers and bowls next to gaming gear. So Stuck To You Merch became an official Etsy shop, and on June 29th, 2022, we launched with a small selection of Disco Elysium and Cyberpunk 2077 merch!

The original pin is still one of our best selling pieces, and has sold more than anything else to this day. You can pick one up in our Etsy store. We always keep them stocked.