D.C.’s Puzzle Huddle took off through the pandemic, taking its puzzles depicting diverse, career-driven characters to homes across the country, seeing momentum from the Black Lives Matter movement — and even landing a spot on Oprah’s Favorite Things 2020 list.
Then owner Matthew Goins got an email.
That inquiry — from Netflix Inc. — led to a deal for the family-owned business to develop puzzles around the streaming service and production company’s forthcoming “Ada Twist, Scientist” cartoon series. Puzzle Huddle will make puzzles based on the artwork, which Netflix will provide, Goins said in an interview. And the company will aim for a soft launch in November, with a goal of expanding that product line in early 2022.
The TV show, now with a season on Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), stems from a book series that features an African American girl who’s a scientist. The books are “already very popular, especially in diverse households,” Goins said. “I was just very familiar with the storyline, the characters, because I have young kids … so it gave me a chance to really pursue it aggressively.”
Puzzle Huddle plans to start selling the products through its website before expanding to major retailers thereafter, he said, noting Netflix has a partnership with Walmart (NYSE: WMT). He declined to disclose the details of the transaction, citing a nondisclosure agreement, but said as with any standard licensing agreement, the company will pay Netflix a percentage based on gross sales.
“I believe a lot of big corporations are really thinking differently about inclusion from a very surface level engagement, but also more deeply in terms of their business strategy and including minority-owned companies in business decisions,” Goins said. “So that mix of things is what I imagine led to being contacted by Netflix with the licensing opportunity.”
Puzzle Huddle has also broken into retail on its own, now with products in Nubian Hueman, an Anacostia and Baltimore retail business focused on goods made by people of color, and District bookseller MahoganyBooks, which has locations in both Anacostia and National Harbor. And sales have been strong through the Covid-19 crisis.
That’s why Goins signed a lease in June for a 1,500-square-foot warehouse in North Bethesda, where he’s now also running the business. Prior to that, he’d been operating from home, with deliveries and pickups at his front door, employees working 18-hour days through the holidays and people using their family’s restroom — “all of the things that you would want a person that’s working to be able to do,” he said.
Goins is now getting ready for sales to pick up ahead of the holidays, hiring about six to eight additional team members to help with shipping. That’s in addition to working with contract employees that help with email, customer service, graphic design, shipping, photography and video production.
“We’re going to throw every promotion up beginning of November,” he said. “We want to really incentivize purchasing even beyond early in the shopping season just to get things delivered and not run into the bottleneck or the congestion that is inevitably going to happen.”
Puzzle Huddle, which has been profitable since its 2018 launch, doubled revenue in 2019 and saw it balloon by 150% in 2020. Goins attributes that explosive growth, in part, to the movement for racial justice, parents looking for ways to support their kids’ learning from home and Puzzle Huddle’s inclusion in Oprah’s Favorite Things — a confluence of events he doesn't expect to repeat itself with the same intensity. But, he added, he is shooting for a roughly 30% increase in revenue for 2021.
In 2022, Goins said, Puzzle Huddle wants to focus on more diverse and underrepresented groups, while building on its other items, such as blankets, pillows and canvas prints. And it’s exploring different types of illustrations, he said. “We’re primarily known for career-oriented images, but we’ll soon have images that explore different themes.”
It’s all in the hopes of continuing to grow — and building on success sparked by a unique moment in history in the last year as more companies talked about the need for greater equity. The key, Goins said, is what happens to sustain that trajectory if the headlines or mindsets shift away from the Black Lives Matter movement.
“A lot of people realized that Black-owned businesses needed more recognition, they needed more engagement, they needed more support, so we all got a benefit through that process,” Goins said. “But having one good year does not set a business on the course to long-term success or viability.
“We’re still living through it, but it will be interesting to see: One year later, two years later, three years later, did our focus on these companies actually help them succeed over the long term?” he added. “Or did they just have a good year and then the next year consumer shopping trends moved onto something else?”
That’s why the Netflix contract holds promise, he said, tapping his small firm rather than giants like Hasbro Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS) or Mattel Inc. (NASDAQ: MAT).
“Those are the kinds of things that help, over the long term, make a more systemic change,” Goins said. “It was more than issuing a diversity statement, which doesn’t necessarily have any teeth unless you make some programmatic changes that aligns resources and priorities.”
Flip through the gallery below for a behind-the-scenes look at the Puzzle Huddle business.
