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With containments, the puzzle is making a comeback and dusting off

2021-03-24T15:29:47.207Z


This game, previously perceived as dusty, has come back into fashion thanks to the health crisis. Confined, most often in family, the French have rediscovered board games with pleasure. Among them, the puzzle has had unprecedented success: the European market has grown from 200 to 300 million euros in less than a year. To read also: "Micromacro crime city", Golden ace 2021 for the best board game For Éric Lathière-Lavergne, the boss of Planet'Puzzles, a specialized online sales site, the hea


Confined, most often in family, the French have rediscovered board games with pleasure.

Among them, the puzzle has had unprecedented success: the European market has grown from 200 to 300 million euros in less than a year.

To read also: "Micromacro crime city", Golden ace 2021 for the best board game

For Éric Lathière-Lavergne, the boss of Planet'Puzzles, a specialized online sales site, the health crisis and its repeated confinements were therefore a godsend: “

To give you an idea of ​​the demand, over the month of April we opened the site only 4 hours for 1 million turnover, ”he

shares.

This period of confinement allowed the puzzle market "

to expand its customer base

 " explains the manager of the company created in 2013. Indeed, the game of patience does not appeal to children, on the contrary:

"95% of our turnover is a puzzle for adults, ”

explains Éric Lathière-Lavergne.

While the game was previously perceived as childish or outdated, the practice is now fashionable, and at all ages:

"Before the pandemic nobody dared to say 'I made a puzzle', now it's different"

notes the leader.

New players

And this trend arouses vocations among young entrepreneurs.

"During the first confinement my mother did puzzles, I helped her but I was frustrated by the visuals"

 : with her entrepreneurial

spirit

, Manon Allender immediately saw in her personal dissatisfaction a larger need, which had to be met. .

Throughout the confinement, his intuition was confirmed:

“I saw a lot of stories from my friends with puzzles”

.

Without waiting, she then created Piece & Love: the first company offered puzzles made in France with graphic and flashy visuals, to

"dust off the activity"

.

And success did not take long: launched in September, the young company has sold more than 15,000 puzzles.

“I had 1000 puzzles made, in fact I sold 10,000!

I had to requisition the whole family, from 8 am to midnight to prepare the orders ”

Manon Allender, founder of Piece & Love

The holiday season in particular was particularly lucrative:

“I had 1000 puzzles made at the start, in fact I sold 10,000!

I had to requisition the whole family, from 8 am to midnight to prepare the orders, ”

she recalls.

The young entrepreneur hopes to double her sales in 2021.

An evolving practice

Beyond the explosion of the market, it is also the practice which is transformed.

Exit the old puzzle with a royalty-free photograph or an image of Walt Disney that we destroyed without remorse after having patiently assembled it.

For many new customers, jigsaw puzzles with flashy visuals are works of art that, when put together, will beautify their interiors.

A destination that Anne-Sophie, founder of Yipee, a brand that has just launched, understood:

“We sell the puzzles with accessories to be able to glue the pieces together, it is a question of extending the experience, ”she

explains.

But these new uses also have an effect on the purchase prices: it will cost 29 euros at Piece & Love and even up to 45 euros for the Yipee puzzles.

A success that should last

But is this craze around the puzzle long-lasting?

This is the question that Éric Lathière-Lavergne asked himself, like other market players, to develop their investment strategy.

They all come to the same conclusion:

“the customers won will stay.

What is certain is that we will not return to the situation of 2019 ”

affirms the boss of Jigsaw Puzzle.

As a result, the company has chosen to invest 2.5 million in a factory in Moselle to create a puzzle made in France on an industrial scale: around thirty jobs will be created on this occasion.

Source: lefigaro

All business articles on 2021-03-24

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