Good friends Daren Yeow and Huron Low, together with designer Joshua Tan, founded Virtuoso, a company that designs and sells playing cards designed purely for the artform, cardistry.
Many in Singapore at the time did not know the two were honing the niche skill of cardistry – a form of performance art focused on manipulating playing cards. A portmanteau of “card” and “artistry”, cardistry was a subset of magic before evolving into its own genre. Virtuoso produced the first deck of cards designed purely for cardistry and has continued to create and sell original cards since. It also offers video tutorials for cardists of all levels, though its customers are typically teenagers.Also known as The Virts, Mr Yeow and Mr Low have also shared a YouTube channel since 2007. Their polished videos showcasing elaborate cardistry routines have racked up over 21 million total views and garnered 167,000 subscribers.
The brand’s card decks are much thinner than traditional playing cards and allow cardists to handle them with greater ease. The paper cards are specially coated with plastic, and have micro air pockets which let them spread smoothly in the hands, but also seal tight when compressed and thrown into the air.
Traditional playing cards are meant to stand independent of the deck and typically feature magic-themed illustrations such as dragons and fire, Mr Tan said. “If I could come up with something that looks great, and these guys could use it to perform at the level that they do, that would be pretty amazing, right?
Even the magic industry – an already small community – had doubts that cardistry could be a profitable business as it was a “niche within a niche”, said Mr Low. He said that the likelihood of letting his parents down weighed heavily on his mind, adding that they had initially advised him to redirect his passion for cardistry into seemingly more practical channels.
All three are also happily married, with wives who have stood by them and never once pressured them to take a more conventional route. Mr Low said: “For us, it’s about doing our best to stay true to what we believe is the right thing to release, something that we are proud of, even if it’s at the expense of potentially putting out a lot more stuff .”Undergraduate Khit Goh, 24, chanced upon Virtuoso while trying his hand at cardistry in 2013.
But he found it too precious to practise with and instead used cheaper decks until he was confident he had mastered a trick.