A Jigsaw Puzzle Reaches a $3 million Valuation in 9 Months
Taking a boring product that no one is thinking about and creating a premium version can make you millions.
Kaylin Marcotte did just this with… jigsaw puzzles.
Kaylin was working at theSkimm, a media startup, and would do jigsaw puzzles at night to unwind. For three years she did a 1,000 piece puzzle every week.
She eventually got tired of the stock photos and dated pictures and thought about starting her own line of them. She thought about it for four to five years and then finally started with $25,000 Kaylin had saved up.
Jiggy Puzzles went live in November 2019. The puzzles featured art from an emergent female artist. At first Kaylin used their existing artwork so it was easy for the artist and would pay them $3,000-5,000 for the first run of puzzles.
The puzzles were packaged in a glass container inside a box. Kaylin also included a tube of glue and a credit card sized spreader so after you were done building the puzzle you could glue it together and use it as a piece of art.
It cost Kaylin $10 for each set and she sold them for $40, positioning them as a premium product.
The manufacturer had a minimum run of 10,000, but Kaylin convinced them to let her take delivery of a few thousand at first and leave the rest as a future commitment.
It took off right away. She was featured on the Today Show in December and in the first four months she sold $250,000 worth of puzzles.
Then the pandemic hit and puzzles took off.
July 2020 - Gwenyth Paltrow shared her pandemic wellness routine and Jiggy was there.
November 2020 - Kaylin gets her first retail partner and Jiggy is in all Anthropologie stores across the country (and their online store)
December 2020 - Ellen Degeneres selects Jiggy for her curated Kind Box
Things went so well they sold out in six months and due to the pandemic, couldn’t resupply for two months. So Kaylin launched gift cards that were 24 piece puzzles with codes on the back. And did an auction as a fundraiser with original one of a kind artwork on puzzles. The highest bid was $4,500 for one of the puzzles and Jiggy received more media attention.
Then Shark Tank reached out to Kaylin (a third of guests are scouted by the show). When she appeared Jiggy Puzzles had been in business for nine months and the business was crushing:
$1.6 million in sales, forecast for $2.25 million for the first year
40% net margins with an expected profit of $900,000 in the first year
No employees, Kaylin was doing it all herself
Completely bootstrapped
Average customer bought four puzzles
Mark Cuban made a deal for 15% of the business for $500,000 ($3.3 million valuation) and matching a year of fundraising (estimated at $50,000). It’s not clear if they signed the deal after the show (many of the deals on the show actually fall through as either party can walk away in due diligence).
As of late 2022 Jiggy had sold over 250,000 puzzles. They introduced a line of kids puzzles (Jiggy Junior) and a marketplace (Jiggy Studio) where artists can sell Jiggy made puzzles and receive a 25% revenue share.
Kaylin hired two employees and has added Bloomingdales, Nordstrom and Macy’s to their retailer list. But the Jiggy website still accounts for the majority of sales.
I love this business as it’s niche, too small of a market for a giant competitor to bother with and a forgotten past time that was only recently refreshed by a pandemic causing everyone to look for something to do in their house.
And since I was obsessed with jigsaw puzzles this week, here are a few interesting tidbits:
Puzzle Huddle, a jigsaw brand that Matthew Goins started when he noticed a lack of diversity in his kids puzzles was selling 800 puzzles a day and has been featured in Oprah’s favorite things list twice.
The global jigsaw puzzle market is $703 million and growing at 0.6% per year
Wasgij (Jigsaw backwards), makes puzzles where the image on the box is not the actual image on the puzzle, but related to it.
There’s an association that puts on speed puzzle competitions
Bill Gate’s spent last New Years Eve doing a jigsaw puzzle
Sources:
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