2020/09/10 – Adult puzzles, who knew a year ago that this would be the eighth most searched for term on the largest retail shopping sites in the world. A news outlet likened the shortage of puzzles to it being like “…the next toilet paper…”.
This surge in demand is not just a Covid-19 effect as puzzle producers started to see increased demand prior to the virus’s arrival. Popularity in puzzling has been growing recently and not just from the older demographic. Puzzle producers have been taking note of this. In fact the British company Gibsons has a line of puzzles targeted at millennials that feature avocados.
So, you might ask, “why are we seeing a shortage of puzzles”? Puzzle producers like many producers of consumer retail items work to build inventory prior to the holiday season. Covid hit Asia and Europe first right around the beginning of the new year. Then North America by March was seeing it at the very time when inventory would be lowest. Leon Stein Vice-President of Marketing with Puzzle Master is quoted in the CBC that “We’ve had a business for 30 years and we’ve never seen anything like this. We usually have you know six months, eight months (sic) supply”. In our discussions here at PuzzlesForever.com with manufacturers, they went from supply like this, to being out of stock of many popular patterns within days.
Okay so they had a run on puzzles, why don’t them just make more? Just like every other business there were those deemed essential who stayed open. All others were expected to close until permitted to reopen. In most of the world puzzle manufacturers were not deemed essential. So, at the very moment that demand became unprecedented, manufacturing stopped.
Each piece of a puzzle must be uniquely shaped to ensure they only fit one way. For high quality puzzles this is done by hand drawing the shapes and superimposing them over the image that will become the puzzle. Pieces of metal are then shaped to match the form which can take up to four weeks of preparation. For a 1,000 piece puzzle it can take up to 230 feet of steel to make just one. The cutter wears out after a certain amount of usage typically around 10,000 copies however it can be re-sharped once. Each time a puzzle is cut, the die (cutter) is subjected to 1,100 tons of pressure to ensure the puzzle is accurately produced.
Now that manufacturers have been permitted to restart, it is with significantly less staff and with new protocols such as social distancing and workplace rules concerning proximity of workstations. All important rules but it does slow down production.
So what does our future hold for puzzles? Certainly less of them and reduced choice for the foreseeable future. Additionally puzzles like many products in our new era of Covid-19 are not expected to be produced in the same quantity as in the past. Looking forward to the 2020 holiday season this could become an issue that we will explore in our next article.
As always thanks for visiting us and we are always here to assist you in your quest for puzzles, games, and crafts that can be treasured for a lifetime.