Meet ADG Mercantile: Hand-Drawn Fandom, Made With Love in LA

ADG Mercantile started with a sticker that didn’t exist.

Anna wanted one of her favorite Dodger, Kiké Hernández. She hunted across Etsy and Amazon for weeks and came up empty. So she made her own. “How hard could drawing be?” she remembers thinking. Then, drily: “It is hard.” But she kept the design simple, and to her surprise, it actually looked like him.

Seven years later, that instinct — fine, I’ll just make it myself — has grown into a full shop. ADG Mercantile sells hand-designed stickers, pins, tote bags, stationery and prints. Or, as Anna puts it, “basically everything husbands hate for you to bring home.” Every product is drawn by her, for the fandoms she loves.

From one sticker to a shop

When Anna posted that first Kiké design to Instagram, she had no expectations. Then fellow Dodgers fans wanted their own — and started requesting other players. It grew from there: Dodgers and Ducks players, Marvel characters, Star Wars favorites, Disney.

The surprise still hasn’t worn off. “It honestly still blows my mind that people look at something I’ve drawn and think ‘I’m gonna spend my hard earned money on that,'” she says. “It’s wild and I never take it for granted.”

Her style has evolved a lot since then. What began as minimalist fan art has grown more detailed and realistic. She can measure the growth in a single character: she recently redrew an old design of Bucky Barnes, and comparing the two says it all. The original face, she admits, “looked like Mr. Meaty.” The new one actually resembles Sebastian Stan — and that progress is a real source of pride.

A little corner away from the noise

Ask Anna what ADG is really about, and the answer isn’t merchandise. It’s escape.

“The world right now is a very scary and sad place,” she says. “In a world with so much ugliness, I just want to be a little corner in the world where everyone that likes the same fandoms I do can escape all of the realness of the world.” Sometimes, she adds, “something as simple as talking about our favorite 100 year old men” — a nod to Bucky and Steve Rogers — “can bring a smile to someone on an otherwise sad and depressing day.”

That corner has a surprisingly wide door. Anna grew up loving the Dodgers and the Ducks, an odd combo she assumed only her family shared. It turns out sports and nerd fandom overlap far more than people expect. “Finding sports love in the nerdy community will always be special to me,” she says.

Why she only draws what she loves

Anna learned an important lesson the hard way: chase trends, and it shows.

She’s not a Stranger Things fan — she got too spooked by the first episode, and owns it with a laugh (“I know I’m a baby”). But during the show’s peak, friends convinced her to make Stranger Things stickers because they were trending. They flopped. So did a Harry Potter collection and a few Marvel characters she didn’t personally care for. Years later, most of those still haven’t sold.

The designs she genuinely loves? They move consistently. After the trend experiments failed, she made a rule: draw what you love. “If you don’t love what you’re making or putting out there, how can you expect others to love it?”

The parts nobody sees

Running a one-person, handmade shop is harder than it looks — and Anna is candid about it.

There’s the economy squeezing small businesses. There’s the rise of AI, which she says has made things genuinely difficult for artists. “Why pay an artist to design something when your computer can do it in minutes for free?” she says, describing a mindset that’s spread even to some event organizers. And there’s the sheer solo workload: she designs every sticker, cuts every one, presses every tote, packs every order.

Then there’s imposter syndrome, which she battles almost daily. What keeps her going is the people around her — family who show up to every market and convention “even though they don’t know half of the things I sell,” and a best friend who has delivered the “you’re that girl” pep talk more times than she can count. Spotting her own work “in the wild” helps, too. “Woah,” she’ll think, “someone really does want what I make.”

The moment that makes it worth it

One booth interaction has stayed with her. In 2024, a little girl — a fellow Bucky fan — stopped by, and the two ended up talking for a while. Afterward, the girl’s aunt messaged Anna to say how much it meant: her niece had finally felt seen and come out of her shell.

The next year, the girl’s birthday gift was a return trip to the convention and to ADG’s booth. She showed up beaming at all the Bucky merch — and made Anna a Bucky friendship bracelet.

That’s the whole thing, right there.

Conventions, community, and what’s next

Vending still feels surreal to Anna, who was traveling to conventions as an attendee just a few years ago. Her first time selling at LA Comic Con was terrifying — imposter syndrome in full force — but she calls the experience life-changing, and admittedly “a bit of an addiction now.” The local creator community has been a lifeline: fellow small-business “friendors” to swap ideas with and familiar faces that make a daunting new event feel a little safer.

She’s honest that ADG is in a tough stretch right now, like a lot of small businesses. But she’s not giving up on it. Alongside the classic merch, she wants to make more “how-to” content online, and she’s working toward hosting events — starting with a private screening of the Avengers: Endgame re-release, complete with ADG goodie bags. If it goes well, she’d love to do the same for Doomsday and beyond.

And to anyone sitting on their own fine, I’ll make it myself idea? Anna doesn’t hesitate. “Do the thing! Take a chance on yourself… believe in yourself and go for it. The worst that could happen is you learn from your mistakes.”

You can find ADG Mercantile online and on Instagram @adgmercantile.