The Colorado company uses high-tech laser cutting machines to cut quarter-inch plywood into unique “whimsical pieces” to create heirloom-quality puzzles.
Created by Chris Wirth and Jeff Eldridge liberty puzzle It was born in 2005 with the idea that intricate wooden jigsaw puzzles would entertain and unite families.
With Christmas and Hanukkah just a few weeks away, families gather for lots of food and fun. But there will also be free time. Many people have solved that dilemma with old-fashioned American jigsaw puzzles manufactured by Liberty Puzzles.
a 2024 Made in America Holiday Gift Guide Liberty Puzzles offers heirloom-quality puzzles for rewarding and fun interactions with family and friends.
“Our jigsaw puzzles are a social vehicle and that’s what we’ve always tried to do,” said Mr. Worth, a father of three boys. “Jigsaw puzzles are great when you need something to do because everyone is together. It brings all generations together.”
Liberty Puzzles produces the highest quality wooden puzzles and is the largest manufacturer of craft wooden puzzles in the United States. Using the latest technology with 90 laser cutting machines at one of its two factories in Boulder, Colorado, the company can produce 500-piece puzzles in 45 minutes on each machine.
It’s a rags-to-riches story, as the demand for puzzles that had a slow start is now overwhelming.
“Even after nearly 20 years, it is still difficult to meet the demand for our puzzles,” Wirth said. “Our entire business cycle is moving toward the fourth quarter. We’ll be making Santa Claus puzzles all summer long. Here at Liberty Puzzles, we like to say every day is Christmas.”
But the demand for classic wooden puzzles wasn’t necessarily a logistical problem.
“In the beginning, we weren’t making any money,” Wirth said. “The first three years were tough because we had three young children and I would stay up at night thinking this was a terrible decision.
“We finally turned the corner and saw about 20 to 30 percent growth every year, which is huge when you think about 20 years. We’ve had sustained growth, but the pandemic When this happened, demand skyrocketed and we now have 130 employees.”
The idea to start a wooden puzzle company came to Wirth during a family vacation in Mexico. His great-aunt had given Worth’s parents antique puzzles that were handmade in the 1930s in suburban Cleveland.
“When the Great Depression hit and a lot of people lost their jobs and people needed inexpensive home entertainment, jigsaw puzzles fit the bill,” Wirth said. “My great-grandmother was friends with the cutting ladies at a company called Falls Puzzles in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
“My family inherited about 100 of these puzzles, but it wasn’t until we were teenagers that my mother started showing them to me and my sister. didn’t want us to see them because they were so fragile and so precious that we started taking them on family trips when we were in our 20s.
“One day we were in Puerto Vallarta and it was raining and we were stuck inside the house all day. I was working on a puzzle, and then a light bulb went off. I said out loud, ‘Surely I can make these things and sell them.’
Wirth’s intuition became a reality, and his American-made puzzles became a hit around the world.
Unlike die-cut cardboard puzzles, Liberty is made of wood and filled with so-called “wacky” pieces in the shape of characters, animals, flowers, or recognizable geometric shapes. It fits the theme of the image in the puzzle, such as Charlie Brown from the Peanuts puzzle or the Cat in the Hat from Dr. Seuss.
But the images in Liberty Puzzles range from animals and cartoon characters to reproductions of works of art by Van Gogh and Monet.
“Anything created before 1924 is automatically in the public domain, so you can create a Van Gogh or a Monet,” Wirth said. “We also license images from about 50 different contemporary artists that we print and paste onto our puzzles, including organizations like Peanuts and Dr. Seuss.”
Wirth likes to think of the pandemic year as the third arrival of the jigsaw puzzle craze, when people were once again stuck inside their homes and looking for fun and exciting projects.
“We were fortunate to be able to expand during the pandemic because we still couldn’t keep up with demand,” Wirth said. “We have a new manufacturing facility that is 53,000 square feet and our old building is 15,000 square feet. We needed space to house all of our laser cutting machines.”
Liberty puzzles begin by applying a designed image created on a large inkjet printer to a piece of 1/4-inch plywood. From there, it is sent to a laser cutting machine programmed to cut the wood pieces of the puzzle.
The most popular Liberty puzzle is the grizzly bear, which when completed takes the shape of a bear itself, rather than a square. Custom-made puzzles are also popular, where you can post your favorite images and turn them into puzzles, as long as the images do not fall under copyright law.
At this time, Liberty is not accepting custom orders until January. However, we have over 1,000 puzzles in stock. Many of the puzzles are Christmas or animal themed.
“The most popular puzzles tend to be the newest ones released,” Wirth says. “Everything sells best right after launch because we have so many repeat customers that everyone wants the latest thing.
“Our prices range from $44 to $225, with most items priced at $115 and in the 500 piece range, our most popular size. It’s the perfect size to solve.
Liberty puzzle is available online But be quick, because the sale of in-stock puzzles ends on December 15th.
