Engineering Alumna Launches Line of Premium Mahjong Sets

Margaret Ellen Maturin, a native of Lafayette, Louisiana, is launching a new business to produce custom-designed mahjong sets that reflect her personality and the culture of the Deep South. The first set is an Ole Miss-themed collection of tiles that Maturin designed and created at the university's Haley Barbour Center for Manufacturing Excellence.

The website for Marelle: A Mahjong Collection will be live and open for sales in August.

"At its core, Marelle is about creating something beautiful that people want to gather around: mahjong sets that tell a story and feel premium without the premium price," Maturin said. "I could only have built it here, at Ole Miss.

"Between the Center for Manufacturing Excellence, my engineering classes and the entrepreneurship programs, Ole Miss gave me the tools, the space and the confidence to turn a Mother's Day gift into a real business before I'd even graduated."

Maturin chose Ole Miss for her engineering education partly because of the CME.

"I remember meeting Ellen as a freshman at a Women in Manufacturing summit on campus, and I immediately knew she was unique," said Joanna Harrelson, the center's associate professor of practice. "She was, and is, the perfect blend of confident and curious.

"It's such a privilege to be able to watch her grow over the last few years and find a future career that allows her to use her many gifts into making a beautiful product and launching what will certainly be an incredible business."

On campus, Maturin quickly began to use the center's resources to manufacture birthday and Christmas gifts for her parents. Eventually, she wanted to level up the gifts and decided to make a custom mahjong set for her mother, Brenda Green, who had just started playing the popular game.

That Mother's Day gift turned into an engineering challenge. First, Maturin tried making the tiles from wood blocks.

"I was on the shop floor at the CME making these little wooden block tiles, but they are fairly small, so trying to bevel the corners and get all the faces completely and perfectly smooth with no visible discrepancies between them was extremely difficult," she said. "It was not going to be a repeatable process."

Next, she tried making her own tiles from epoxy resin, but the process was too complicated and expensive. Finally, Maturin decided to purchase blank tiles and create custom designs for them.

She bought a tablet computer and taught herself to use a graphics editing software package over Labor Day weekend 2025.

"The tiles are tiny, so I didn't know if my designs would even look right when rendered in real life," Maturin said. She created 3D models of the designs and tried using a 3D resin printer to transfer the designs to blank tiles.

"After working out the little kinks with the designs, I realized that they looked pretty good," she said. "And my now-fiance, Joe, told me, 'You should turn this into a business.'"

Maturin pondered the possibility as she continued to design the full set – 160 tiles for a full American mahjong set – for her mother's gift.

Mahjong dates back to the mid-19th century in China but has exploded in popularity in recent years. The mahjong market neared $2 billion in 2025 and is projected to balloon to $3 billion over the next decade, according to Wise Guy Reports.

"The further I got in the design process, I realized other people would like what I was creating too, so I started planning to maybe – very much a maybe – turn it into a business," Maturin said. "I knew I wanted to deliver a premium look and feel, with the three or four multilayered tiles that you see from some other brands, but not at the price point that a lot of the tile sets out there are right now."

Premium mahjong sets can cost $450 and up just for the tiles. Maturin used techniques she learned in engineering classes and in the CME to help keep her costs low.

"I source blank tiles with my own specific color layers and tile sizing, then I do the final design application portion of the manufacturing here in the United States with my own machinery," she said.

Besides lowering manufacturing costs, Maturin wanted her product to stand out in a growing market. Many premium tiles are laser engraved, but Marelle's tiles are gloss embossed, providing a 3D texture and allowing for more intricate details and realism than traditional engraving.

Maturin also wanted her tiles to tell a story. She designs each set with connections to her life and what she loves as well as cultural aspects of the region.

"I wanted it to have meaning," Maturin said. "For example, the crack design is drawn based off my friend Natalie. She was a twirler here at Ole Miss, and I asked her if I could draw her. So the twirler on the crack design is her."

Crack, or character, tiles are numbered 1-9 and are one of the suits in mahjong.

While refining her processes and materials, Maturin also get business advice and raised some capital by entering the LandShark Tank Pitch Competition in fall 2025 and the spring 2026 Gillespie Business Plan Competition, both programs of the Ole Miss Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She placed second in the pitch competition and third in the business plan contest, also winning the Edward G. Francis Sr. Entrepreneurship Award in the latter.

She used the prize money to purchase machines and equipment for the business.

When it came time to name her company, Maturin again leaned into her own personality and interests. Marelle is a combination of her first and middle names: Margaret and Ellen.

"I also chose that name because I wanted something that had a soft French sound to it, to honor and pay homage to my own Cajun French heritage and the culture that I was raised in," she said. "We're going to have some fun elements in the branding that kind of hint towards my story as well."

Each set includes tiles, four guide cards for the theme and two dice in a velvet case, all for $275. Marelle will also offer sets of racks, mats for each theme, tile storage cases and tote bags. Players can take it all to play with their friends with a full suite bundle priced at $445, the price of a tile set alone from some competitors.

Marelle's Ole Miss set, The Grove Collection, will also be available in a limited quantity at Oxford Floral, and Maturin will be present for the store's Marelle launch on Aug. 20.

Maturin is already busy planning additional designs for the business.

"It's going to be a lifestyle theme closely tied to the phase of life that I am currently in," she said. "There will also be a partial customization option that we'll offer for that very next drop.

"It's going to be very special, every single collection."

Top: The first product offered by Marelle: A Mahjong Collection is an Ole Miss-themed set of tiles that founder Margaret Ellen Maturin designed and created at the Haley Barbour Center for Manufacturing Excellence. Maturin, who completed her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in May, designed the first set as a special Mother's Day gift. Photo by Lo Magee Photography