When I was walking in a calm street in a South Indian city, a small signboard - The Puzzle Shop - caught my attention. Even though it looked like the entrance of a house, it was a shop. Intrigued by the name and the look, I decided to check it out. It was neat, tidy and well organized. There were dozens of steel cupboards that were full of square shaped boxes.
At a corner of the shop a teenage girl was working in a computer and at another corner a man in his late forties was working on pieces of wood. A middle aged woman who was sitting at a desk received me with a warm smile, "How can I help you sir?"
I replied, "I don't have anything specific in my mind. Your signboard made me pop into your shop to see whether I could find some toys for my three year old daughter."
"We specialize in wooden jigsaw puzzles. We create original puzzles for all occasions, all countries and all age groups. We have dozens of puzzles for three year old kids," said Geetha - that was her name.
A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of numerous small, often oddly shaped, interlocking and tessellating pieces. Each piece has a small part of a picture on it; when complete, a jigsaw puzzle produces a complete picture. Jigsaw puzzles were originally created by painting a picture on a flat, rectangular piece of wood, and then cutting that picture into small pieces with a jigsaw, hence the name.
I said, "I believe that most modern jigsaw puzzles are made out of cardboard, since they are easier and cheaper to mass produce. Using wood to produce puzzles increases the cost substantially and consumers will not be able to buy them. What makes you concentrate on wooden puzzles?"
"There are hundreds of companies that make jigsaw puzzles in cardboards and they target kids. After a few uses, these puzzles get mutilated and damaged and become unusable. When you buy wooden puzzles they last for years and the additional cost is fully justified. Our customers are schools and libraries. They don't want a product that can be used only for a few days," said Geetha.
The puzzles were of high quality and I bought a few of them.
"Generally we sell to institutional customers only and we accept only export orders," said Geetha as she packed them.
"How did you get into this business?" I asked her.
"My husband was working as a medical representative that involved a lot of travel. When his health condition did not allow him to travel and made him stay at home, he had to quit the job. That happened three years ago. During the next three months we had to undergo a lot of financial difficulties. One day our daughter suggested that we could make wooden toys and sell them to make money. We immediately liked that idea because woodwork was my husband's favorite hobby and he could do the work from home. We did some market research and realized that wooden toys would never be able to compete with modern, sophisticated, machine made toys. After many brainstorming sessions, we came to the conclusion that making and selling wooden jigsaw puzzle was a viable business idea," said Geetha.
"That's interesting," I said. "We created a few dozen wooden puzzles and contacted a few local play schools. Even though they encouraged us a lot, the price they agreed to pay was very low. We did not mind the low profit and continued selling our products to keep our kitchen warm. Last year my cousin visited us and told us that these products can be sold in thousands to Libraries and Institutions in countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Typical images found on jigsaw puzzles include scenes from nature and buildings. As any kind of picture can be used to make a jigsaw puzzle, we created sample puzzles with pictures that appeal to the nationalism of these countries. My cousin showed them to hundreds of libraries and schools in New Zealand, and one fine morning we bagged an order for 10,000 pieces! Actually the order was for 500 copies of 20 master puzzles. My husband made puzzle dies for these 20 puzzles and my cousin made 10,000 pieces within a fortnight. That single order solved all our financial difficulties. This transaction made us conscious of the opportunities present in developed countries. Now, we have customers from eight countries and we - my husband and I - work from home. In fact this shop is a part of our house and was our living hall till last year."