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Children's puzzles from Ravensburger: production in three shifts
Photo: Felix Kästle / dpa
Distraction and pastime in shutdown frustration: The strong demand for games and puzzles in the corona pandemic gave the toy manufacturer Ravensburger a growth spurt in 2020.
The Group's sales rose by 20 percent to 632 million euros in 2020 compared to the previous year.
The toy manufacturer with the blue triangle sold a total of 28 million puzzles worldwide - that is a third more than in the previous year, as the company announced.
CEO Clemens Maier said that the year of the crisis was good.
According to Maier, Corona had triggered a little hype about the rather "quiet hobby".
The trend towards puzzling was also noticeable before the pandemic, said Maier.
Last year, production in three-shift operation was necessary to meet demand, said CFO Hanspeter Mürle.
Nevertheless, there were delivery bottlenecks.
A third of the goods are sold online
Nevertheless, Ravensburger does not want to call itself a Corona winner.
"We humbly see that we are in an industry that is less affected by the crisis than others," said Maier.
He did not want to make a forecast for the coming year.
"We assume that the trend towards games and puzzles will continue."
The group was also able to score points with board games in 2020.
Here, above all, classics were in demand, said Maier.
25 million games have been sold worldwide.
Business was particularly good in North America, Great Britain and Spain.
But they are also very satisfied with the growth in Germany.
The closings of the stationary trade were only moderately noticeable because the sales channels are wide.
A third of sales are online.
Things went well not only for Ravensburger games.
"The toy industry had a really good year in 2020," said the managing director of the German Association of the Toy Industry in Nuremberg, Ulrich Brobeil.
Almost all product groups would have done well.
The association wants to publish specific figures and results of a survey among toy manufacturers this Thursday.
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caw / mic / dpa
