PFAFFTOWN, N.C. (AP) - With the COVID-19 pandemic having largely brought the U.S. economy to a halt, one local company is doing better than it ever has before. Heritage Puzzle, a Pfafftown based jigsaw puzzle company, is shipping out puzzles at a rate the owners have never seen.
“We ship out sometimes in a day what we used to ship out in a month,” said Matt Everhart, whose mother, Karen, is the president of the company.
Business is so busy, the Everharts are having a hard time keeping up supply to meet demand. There are five companies in the United States that cut puzzles for companies at any level of volume, Karen Everhart said, and three of them had to close for a period of weeks due to COVID-19.
“There’s a huge backlog of puzzles waiting to be cut,” Karen Everhart said. ”We’re certainly behind on getting shipments in, and we expect that production to get ramped back up. They just take a while to get back in stock.”
Historically, the Everharts said, 90% of the company’s business has been wholesale orders to independent gift shops and card stores. However, with more people stuck at home and looking for ways to pass the time, more people are buying puzzles directly from the company.
“We’ve had to strike a balance between satisfying our wholesale accounts when we can and satisfying our retail orders because people can’t get out and get to a store,” Karen Everhart said. “We feel like it’s important to get it to people.”
Founded in 1998, Heritage Puzzle offers 250 puzzles to consumers, but the Everharts said their coastal themed puzzles are among the most popular with consumers. The company’s first puzzle was an image of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse.
Karen Everhart said it can be kind of odd to be so successful when many businesses are closed or having to lay off and furlough employees.
“We feel bad that it happened because of the way it happened, but we are also very thankful,” Karen Everhart said. “I think we’ve done a service to people as well, and be able to provide some entertainment to a family stuck at home.”
As a result of a booming business, the Everharts decided to freeze their prices instead of raising them with raised demand, keeping the puzzles affordable during a tough economic period, Matt said.
“I’ve had lots of comments whether it was on the order of after shipping, just thanking us for giving them something to do,” Matt Everhart said.
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