Brian Hodges opened a Pokémon business after being inspired by his son Nathan, who is an expert on the franchise. The former TCC student-turned-entrepreneur has owned several welding businesses over the years and is now venturing into the world of Pokémon cards as the owner of Card Center in North Richland Hills.
Q: When did your Pokémon business start?
A: March of 2025. I didn’t know anything about Pokémon at all. My son has been into it for over 20 years. We kind of bantered at lunch, like “What do you want to do for a living?” And he was like, “Man, I’d love to open up a Pokémon store.” … A little while later, we saw this building with a piece of paper in the window that said “for rent.” The price was way cheaper than I expected. We got the keys on May 15 and did our first soft opening on June 1. We started small, but now we’re open seven days a week.
Q: You mentioned a welding business. What’s that like?
A: I started welding right out of high school and started my own business basically almost right off the bat, just working on cars, welding and doing fabrication. I started my first business with $2,500 on credit cards, and it did great. In 2009, when the economy was not doing well at all, I closed that down and took a manager position at a Sears Auto Center. I learned about big business there, which that’s something I did not know about. Two years later, I opened up another welding shop, and it’s been running since.
Q: What has been your favorite part about this business?
A: I love people. I absolutely love people. That’s one thing the welding shop never provided me. Because I’m doing these big contracts for these big companies, I don’t meet probably 75% of my customers. I always missed talking to people. The interactions, I love it. I love telling my story. I talk to a lot of younger people about how I started, how I messed up and what I would do differently in life. I really love the community on this. Everybody’s been super, super, super nice. I get hundreds and hundreds of people in every week. It puts a smile on my face when I come to work.
Q: Did having your prior business help you with this one?
A: One hundred percent, no questions asked. My first business was BBJ’s Racing. It was a storefront for performance car parts for imports, which nobody was really doing back in 1995. I had my own thing in Fort Worth, kind of like this Pokémon store. … I try to pick one niche and be the best at it. If you are doing six things at once, you can’t be the best at all of them. Since we didn’t have any competition doing just exclusive Pokémon, I wanted to make sure when I did it, I was the best.
Q: Would you say being a fan helps you run the business better, rather than someone who’s just in it for the money?
A: This is 100% business for me. … I know how to run a business. I know how I could buy this for X amount of money, and I can sell it for this X amount of money. So, on the business side, I understood very well. My son is the Pokémon guru. He’s teaching me all the knowledge on the other side. … At our one-year mark, on June 1, I will open up my first packs, something big and crazy on live streaming. We’ve been building it up so people can watch my journey going from a businessman in Pokémon to it being a fun hobby.
Q: What makes it all worth it?
A: It’s really cool to see. You’ll have a family come in with a 5- or 6-year-old boy and girl, and their smiles look like my face did when I grew up. I can see that same smile on the kids’ faces as I had 40 years ago. … I have 40- to 60-year-old grown men that have been in it for 25 years. They have the same smile as the 5-year-old kid does. Pokémon brings everybody together.
