People Over Profit: How Kristian and Princess Built Drum Island
Zero interviewed the owners: the bonsai and axolotl red flags, a twenty thousand dollar rabbit hole, a Nico Robin sale, and the one rule Drum Island runs on. People over Profit.
People Over Profit: How Kristian and Princess Built Drum Island
Car sent me to interview the owners of Drum Island Trading Co., which is a funny assignment when you already work here. I ring up their cards, I sweep their floor, and I thought I knew the story. I did not know the story. So here is what I learned, straight from Kristian and Princess, about how this shop actually happened.
The owners, introduced by themselves
Kristian goes by Kris206 online, and most of you know his other job without realizing it. He is an Allstate insurance agent, and the agency sits in the same building as the card shop. His partner and wife is Princess, known online as KanackAttack, and she is the reason the shop runs day to day. She packs the orders, stocks the shelves, cleans, and runs the register, while Kristian handles purchasing, taxes, bookkeeping, and social media.
Princess grew up in the Philippines and came to cards the modern way. Kristian introduced her to Pokémon, and her game of choice is Pokémon Go, which means she is the only person in this building whose collection walks around the neighborhood with her. Before the shop, she worked for Boeing through a contract with Xerox, so the operations brain was already there long before there were booster boxes to sort.
Opening day at the card table: Kristian with his sister, proudly fanning her One Piece pulls, and her husband. Photo: Drum Island Trading Co.
The red flag
To understand how Princess knew the card shop was coming, you have to understand the pattern. At the beginning of this year, the two of them started a hobby together: bonsai. Then, while Kristian was planning the shop, he started a fish tank, specifically an axolotl tank. Princess told me, in her words, that Kristian is always doing crazy stuff like this, so him buying a couple of trading cards was an instant red flag. She has seen this movie. It ends with a store.
The cards were not new to him, either. Kristian started playing Magic: The Gathering in middle school, back when Ice Age and Mirage were the new sets. After high school, before he left to join the Marine Corps, he walked into Shane's Cards, back when Shane's sat next to Uwajimaya, and asked the lady at the counter what his cards were worth. She told him a couple of bucks. He asked her to donate them to kids instead. Then life happened, and the hobby waited about twenty years for its second act.
Twenty thousand dollars down the rabbit hole
The second act started in February 2026, when his friend Daniel Lopez took him to the Twin Oaks Card Show in Auburn. Daniel knew Kristian was a huge One Piece fan and was getting into the card game, so he figured a card show was a safe afternoon out. Kristian bought a couple of cards and could not understand why they sold for so much. Princess could have told Daniel what happens next, because she has the red-flag training. He went home and fell completely down the TCG rabbit hole.
By his own count, Kristian spent maybe twenty thousand dollars on cards in those first months. Then the other side of the ledger showed up. He sold a Nico Robin card on Whatnot for one thousand dollars and made about two thousand more selling other cards, and the hobby suddenly looked like a business trying to happen. In May, Princess told him she would support him if he opened a store. Her version is simpler and stronger: opening a card store is a big deal with a lot of moving parts, but she will always support her husband. Drum Island Trading Co. opened on August 8, 2026.
Opening day Pokémon Bingo with a young player, Zoro standing guard. Photo: Drum Island Trading Co.
Why a card shop, and why here
When I asked why they landed on a card store, Kristian pointed at the moment we are all living in. With the rise of AI, they wanted an event- and experience-based business, something people could enjoy in a room together. The phrase he used, and the one that ended up on the shop's soul, is People over Profit. The name was more of a whim. Chopper is his favorite One Piece character, and Chopper comes from Drum Island, home of the Drum Kingdom, now known as the Sakura Kingdom. Yes, that was a spoiler. No, he is not sorry.
The location was never a question. Kristian was born and raised in Seattle, he works in Seattle, and he has spent a long portion of his life in South Seattle. If he was going to build something, he was going to build it on the community here. And the ambition is deliberately small. They do not want to grow into a large store or make the most money. They want a spot where people feel comfortable hanging out. In Kristian's words, he does not want customers; he wants people to feel like family and friends, and everyone gets a family discount. This is a place for players and collectors.
The honest part
Kristian told me to be brutally honest about the hard parts, so here it is in his words and hers. They are at the shop until midnight almost seven days a week. They cannot get enough inventory from distributors to even keep the lights on, and they are spending into their savings just to keep the momentum going. The hardest part for Princess is the simplest one: the physical requirement of having to be in the store, every day, whether you are rested or not.
Kristian is also the first to name his own flaw. He is generous by nature, generous to a fault, and he told me that after all the fun, it is still a business that has to succeed. You cannot pour from an empty cup. And then he told me the saving grace, which was not a distributor or a loan. It has been the community. People give them advice. People buy even when the prices are not where the shop wants them to be. People tell their friends and family, and it is because of them that Drum Island can continue to build.
The balance
I ended the interview by asking each of them for one sentence about the other. Kristian said Princess gives him the courage to take chances, and that he would not be able to do anything without her, because she grounds him. Princess said Kristian makes her life exciting, that he always has new ideas, not always great ones, and that together they find the balance to make everything work. I have worked in this shop long enough to tell you both sentences are accurate.
One last detail, and it is my favorite thing I learned. Princess wanted you all to know that Kristian knows the entire Gettysburg Address by heart. The man can price a booster box, recite "Four score and seven years ago" without a pause, and then argue about One Piece until midnight. That is your local card shop owner. Come say hi, catch a game, and become part of the family discount.
Cover photo: the Rainier Ave S building that holds both the Landon Suson Agency and Drum Island Trading Co. Photo: Drum Island Trading Co.
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