Talking Shop
Boxing Clever Sam Giltrow spoke to a selection of indie retailers about their Games and Puzzles offerings, finding out what’s selling well and how they encourage customers to see them as a go to destination for the category.
Mark Green - The Yorkshire Jigsaw Store, Easingwold
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e stock all the major brands of jigsaw puzzles. Our bricks and mortar store in Easingwold was a newsagent in the town for 50 years, but the shop was rebranded to The Yorkshire Jigsaw Store in 2014 with the aim of creating the largest jigsaw store in Yorkshire. We take puzzles from all the major manufacturers and sell them through the store and website, which has been getting busier and busier each year - and as soon as Covid hit, it went ballistic. Sales have been phenomenal; anything and everything was selling, particularly nostalgia lines, but during lockdown a lot of manufacturers were struggling to produce stock and get it to us. It was a matter of taking anything they had, and I think people were so desperate for puzzles that they didn’t really mind too much what the design was. With regards our success during these covid times we wouldn’t have been able to manage without our team who ended up working much longer hours than in usual times, to fulfil all the orders.
Ranges which have done particularly well for us during the last year include Falcon De Luxe from Jumbo, which regularly brings out new titles. As soon as they are released, people want them straight away. Jumbo also seem to have had consistent stock available. Gibsons are getting back on track now and we have been taking in a lot of stock. They produce many puzzles with designs local to us, such as Scarborough, York and Staithes, which are very popular with our customers, so we’ve been delighted to see those back on the shelves. We also carry other ranges from Jumbo and Kidicraft, while Clementoni ranges are solid performers too. Hopefully it now seems to be back to business as usual in terms of stock availability, across the board. We offer advice to our customers who want help with choosing puzzles, particularly if they have not bought puzzles before. They ask things like which brands they should go for; certain ones have smart-cut pieces which are irregular shape and more difficult to complete than the standard shape. But other people come in that have been doing jigsaws all their lives and probably have even better knowledge of them than we do. Although sales have quietened down a bit since restrictions were relaxed, our customer base is now much higher than when we first started. We now have over 30,000 people on our mailing list, including international customers, and are having a warehouse built just outside town, because we have outgrown where we used to store our puzzles above the shop. We are expecting the new warehouse to be operational by the middle of September, just in time for Christmas. We are confident it will be a busy Christmas with so many new customers and we send out marketing emails twice a week. A new release, such as a launch from Falcon, will see a spike in orders in response to our email announcement, so we know the customers are
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there – we just have to balance getting the right stock in, at the right time. We are a destination store. We have spoken to holidaymakers staying in the area who say one of the reasons for coming up this way is to come and visit us, which is great. We have even had people travelling for three hours on a day trip just to come to the shop. Since Covid, the number of people who are really into jigsaw puzzles has grown – some tell us they are addicted to them. We even had some customers, who were holidaying up here in their caravan visit the shop because they had forgotten to bring their puzzle board. We can lend them an ex-demo board for the week – it’s lovely to be help people like that. We haven’t yet held demonstrations in the shop, but it is something we had started to consider before Covid hit. We know a couple of illustrators who are based in Yorkshire, and it’s something we will look at again for the future. As things return to normal, we’re looking forward to seeing the reps again face to face. Our suppliers have been very supportive, and we have a good relationship with all of them. We are looking forward to the run up to Christmas and seeing the new festive releases, which always sell well, such as the Gibsons limited edition puzzle and the Falcon De Luxe two-pack of 2,000-piece puzzles, which they release each Christmas and are extremely popular. For children, licensed puzzles such as those from Ravensburger, with characters like Marvel Avengers, are perfect pick-up lines for a Christmas gift. We also stock a good selection from Orchard Toys, which parents love as they are educational and help with subjects like spellings and maths for early years children. There really is something for everyone in our shop, and we are confident that sales will continue to do well in the run up to Christmas and beyond.
