Jigsaw puzzles have seen a boom in popularity as Canadians continue to hunker down at home. But puzzle makers have struggled to meet the explosion in demand.
One of those puzzle-makers is David Manga, who is president of Cobble Hill Puzzles in Victoria, B.C. He told CTV鈥檚 Your Morning on Wednesday that when the pandemic first hit, he told his employees to stay home and had expected sales to plummet, like most businesses.
鈥淎bout two weeks later, we noticed that puzzle sales kept going up and up. And it caught us by surprise, but sales just boomed after about two weeks,鈥� said Manga.
In 2019 Cobble Hill sold 1.3 million puzzles. But as a result of the puzzle boom, the company ended up selling 2.4 million in 2020.
鈥淭hey would鈥檝e grown by more, but we just simply couldn鈥檛 manufacture them fast enough,鈥� said Manga.
Manga says he couldn鈥檛 quickly acquire more machinery to boost puzzle manufacturing and meet demand.
鈥淲hen you cut a puzzle, it鈥檚 as if you鈥檙e cutting not just one piece of paper but a thousand pieces of paper. We need really strong die cutting machines and they鈥檙e not readily available. So, there wasn鈥檛 a lot of capacity in the market to make more puzzles,鈥� Manga explained. 鈥淥ur puzzles are made in North America, so we don鈥檛 have the ability to get more machinery that fast.鈥�
Prior to the pandemic, Cobble Hill would generally have 530 out of its 550 puzzle designs in stock.
鈥淎 store could call us up and pick what they wanted. But after the pandemic started, our puzzle supply got so poor, that we might have only 15 per cent of puzzles in stock at any time,鈥� said Manga.
Now almost a year into the pandemic, Manga says sales continue to be strong.
鈥淚t鈥檚 remarkable that the puzzle fad hasn鈥檛 slowed down. I think the big thing for the market going forward is that it鈥檚 introduced a lot of people to puzzles for the first time,鈥� said Manga. 鈥淎nd if they like it, they鈥檒l keep coming back for more.鈥濃��
