JetSetPlay — Games Designed to Be Gifted
About

We make brands playable.

A female-founded San Francisco game house. We make custom branded games that get played and seen — for companies, creators, events and hospitality who know relationships are the real gift.

What we do

Nobody needs more stuff. Everybody needs more play.

We started with backgammon — travel boards built for summer tables, beach clubs, long lunches, and the kind of game that follows people from one place to the next. Today we design custom backgammon, dominoes, poker, mahjong, playing cards, Rummikub, and more for corporate gifting, hospitality, events, launches, and limited drops.

Our work sits between product design, gifting, hospitality, and human connection. Because the best gifts are rarely the most expensive ones — they're the ones where you can feel the thought.

Sky Waterman, founder of JetSetPlay, standing beside shelves of branded JetSetPlay game tubesFemale-founded
A note from our founder

Gift giving has always been my language.

My secret skill — maybe my obsession — is thinking in gifts. I notice the details. The thing someone mentioned once. The place they love. The color they always wear. The object that would make a table better, a trip more fun, or a person feel seen.

People don't remember where the money went. They remember where the thought went.

Games were always my favorite kind of gift, because they do something most objects don't: they bring people together. They create a reason to sit, laugh, compete, linger, tell stories, and stay a little longer than planned.

My love of backgammon came from years spent in Beirut and a deep love of the Middle East. In Lebanon, backgammon — tawla, “the table” — isn't just a game. It's part of the rhythm of life. At the chicest beach clubs in Beirut, a board can feel as essential as a bathing suit.

I still remember the first time a charming Lebanese man picked me up for a date in board shorts and a linen shirt, a backgammon board tucked under his arm. I knew that place would steal my heart forever. It did.

Years later, planning my wedding in Bodrum, those two loves finally collided. I wanted every detail to feel personal — not expensive for its own sake, but meaningful. The only boards I could find that felt right cost ten times what I could spend. So I made them myself.

That became the start of my manufacturing career. The boards led to napkins, signs, gift bags, lighters, slippers — every small piece of the experience. And the funny thing is, those were the details people remembered. No one sent me photos of the flowers or texted me about the cake. But people kept sending photos of themselves playing the boards — on boats, on balconies, all over the world.

That was the moment I understood what JetSetPlay could become.

I'm proud to lead JetSetPlay as a female founder — a studio built on the belief that the most memorable gifts are the most thoughtful ones.

— Sky

The pivot

From travel boards to corporate gifting.

At first, JetSetPlay was a side project. I ordered 350 boards in six designs and set off down the direct-to-consumer path with absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Then something unexpected happened. The inquiries that kept landing weren't from individual shoppers. They were from companies — finance, travel, media, tech, hospitality, founder offices, event teams, agencies, brand teams. Our site was bright, fuchsia, and fun. Nothing about it said “corporate.” But the same need kept surfacing: gifts that felt personal, useful, brandable, beautiful — and not destined for a landfill.

For the first time, I'd found a problem built for the way my brain works. How do you make corporate gifting feel less generic? How do you make branded objects people actually want to keep? That became JetSetPlay

The partnership

Built by creativity and operations.

Sky · Creative

Sky brings the creative obsession: the product ideas, the details, the color, the experience, the story, and the emotional logic of why a gift works.

Zaeem · Operations

Zaeem brings the model: finance, operations, production, pricing, scale, and discipline — LSE, KPMG, nearly a decade at Goldman Sachs, then hard tech and consulting before building JetSetPlay.

Sky saw the gifting opportunity. Zaeem built the model that makes it work — together we turned JetSetPlay from a travel-board brand into a corporate gifting and custom games studio.

Our model

Business gifting, by design.

Most “luxury” gifting companies fall into one of two camps. They're platforms — distributing products they didn't design. Or they're heritage houses — designing beautifully, but at prices that don't scale for a 50-person client dinner, a 250-person retreat, or a 500-person sales kickoff.

JetSetPlayis neither. We're a leather game house built for corporate gifting, hospitality, events and brand programs. We design every piece, and we build around your moment, your colors, your audience, your timeline and your budget.

Small enough to feel personal. Large enough to make beautiful custom production possible.

How it works

Designed in-house, made with care.

01

Designed in-house, not catalog-clicked

Every project starts as a brief — your brand, colors, event, recipient, quantity, deadline, and level of personalization. We help make what you actually want, not what already exists.

02

Manufactured through trusted partners

We run the relationships with the makers who make the work possible — partners chosen for materials, craft, reliability, and a willingness to do real custom work at our scale.

03

Packaged and fulfilled with care

The unboxing is part of the gift. Every order is designed to feel like discovery — the board, the pouch, the roll, the chips, the dice, the note. That moment is where we obsess.

Play for good

Gifting shouldn’t be waste. It should be an hour.

Companies spend billions on gifts that get tossed within weeks. We’re a female-founded studio built to change the math: fewer objects headed for landfill, more moments that actually matter. Every set is made to be played and kept for years — and a portion of every order funds therapeutic games for refugee children across the Middle East.

A note on why
My love of games began in Beirut, at the table. Giving back to the children of the region that gave me so much isn’t a campaign — it’s the whole point.
— Sky, Founder
01

Female-founded, by design

Built and led by our founder on one belief: the most memorable gifts are the most thoughtful ones — never the most wasteful.

02

Less waste, more play

A game doesn’t vanish into a drawer. It lives on the table and gets played, so gifting spend becomes connection instead of clutter.

03

Purpose in every order

A portion of every order funds therapeutic play for displaced children in the Middle East — because play helps kids feel safe, seen, and like kids again.

Stay in the room.

Tell us your brand, your moment and the people you want to reach. We'll design the game.