Embers Matchbooks
About the Project
Embers Matchbooks is a small business I built from the ground up as a hands-on way to learn paid social, brand building, and ecommerce end to end.
It started when I began collecting matchbooks and noticed a community of people designing their own online. That became a line of custom matchbooks inspired by Texas cities, landmarks and local hotspots, displayed as collectible shadowbox pieces. I sourced the materials, developed the designs, and built the brand identity, then launched an Instagram presence and a Shopify storefront.
Social Media + Meta Ads
For this project Instagram was the best place to get eyes on the products and drive people to the Shopify site I'd built, so that's where I started. I created the account and took all of my own photos, edited them in Photoshop and a few editing apps, and made every post myself , Canva for posters and stories, and my own email templates.
On the paid side, I set up Meta Business Manager from scratch and ran carousel campaigns to a targeted audience, tracking everything through GA4 with UTM parameters so I could see what paid social was actually contributing.
Results
When I first launched the Instagram, I was picking up followers but not at a pace that was going to turn into sales. So I set up Meta Business Manager and ran my first campaign, small budget, targeting ages 18–35 and 55–65. It averaged about $0.26 per click, which was cheap traffic, but it didn't convert.
I pivoted quickly. The data showed 25–34 was where the traction was, so I narrowed the targeting to that group and raised the budget. That round brought in my first two sales (one of them from my mom, which I'm counting).
By the third campaign I was seeing steady traffic to the site but still not enough of it converting. That told me the problem wasn't getting people there, it was that a shadowbox isn't an impulse buy, and a first-time visitor wasn't ready to purchase on the spot. So I added a discount-code popup to capture emails and built a welcome series to sell on the second or third touch instead of the first. That produced three more sales.
The real return was figuring out that incentives, targeting, and email had to work together , none of them did much alone. Four months in, that's 100 followers and steady sales, all built with love.
Where is Embers now?
Embers is still live and still selling. I'm expanding the collection to new Texas cities and testing new campaigns as I go, every round teaches me something I can use on the next one. Let me know if theres a city you'd like to se!
