Doing What You Love… Doesn’t Have To Hurt (and WHAT this has to do with our folding table risers!)

O.K. so it’s not just you… so we are going to start here: What in the Dickens is a “PUZZLER?”

A “puzzler” is a term commonly used to refer to folks who enjoy solving puzzles as a hobby or pastime. These puzzles can vary widely in form and complexity, including jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, sudoku, logic puzzles, and more.

Going back several years now, we discovered from our annual survey of customers who purchased our risers, that puzzlers use our Lift Your Table® folding table risers – a set of 4 risers that lift the height of folding tables to counter height, bar height, and higher and create a more ergonomic work surface for people who stand at tables to work or hobby.

Why do puzzlers use our risers? Competitive puzzlers complete jigsaw puzzles in a timed competition and many “speed puzzlers” STAND to puzzle. Standing is commonly known to help puzzlers complete their puzzles faster and the faster one puzzles, the more likely he or she is to be one of the hopefuls who will be headed to Spain in the fall to compete on behalf of the United States in the …wait for it…WORLD Jigsaw Puzzle Championships!

Why do standing puzzlers benefit from using our risers? Many puzzlers work from standard folding tables – tables that were designed to sit at. When they stand to puzzle, they experience lower back pain and neck strain from needing to hunch over their puzzles. In fact, we discovered many puzzlers suffer from life-altering back issues such as Kyphosis (or the rounding of the back.)

That understood, last year, during one of our in-office customer brainstorming sessions, we decided to try to reach out to some puzzling groups to see how we might be able to reach more puzzlers with the good news that “doing what you love, doesn’t have to hurt (your back).

After some hits and misses, we scored when we connected with the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association.

This small but powerful group of people to lead this organization were delightful to work with from start to finish. Our main contact, Aly, encouraged us to become a part of the event as vendors in the convention expo running in conjunction with the competition as they recognized the need our risers fill for puzzlers. Fortunately, the event would be held in San Diego, just a couple hour drive for us, and we began to prepare

Our planned vendor space was not compatible with our official trade show booth, so preparing for the puzzler convention involved work not just creating a new booth that would work in the space we had, but we also needing to customize our marketing materials to speak to the puzzlers so they would easily understand the problem our risers address for them.

Something we were excited about as we prepared for the puzzlers is: we reached out to a U.S.-based puzzle manufacturer, Rachel Duguay. Puzzle Support, Micro Puzzles and they gave us an unbelievable price to make us custom micro puzzles our ultra talented Media Manager, Pierce Marengo, designed which was a version of our booth banner! The puzzlers loved this micro puzzle, and we were able to give over a hundred of our micro puzzles away!

During the 3 day competition and expo, approximately 1000 puzzlers (the competitors between competitions and the visitors) were given the opportunity to participate in workshops that covered various topics of interest to puzzlers. When I was asked to present a workshop on “The Ergonomics of Puzzling”, the Board agreed it would be a great topic, and I was selected to lead an hour-long workshop on the 3rd day of the convention! I consulted with Zeena Dhalla, VertiAlign, did my homework, and worked with Pierce to bring together an exciting workshop where people were given ideas to improve the ergonomics of their puzzling space. Zeena also introduced us to Mike Arnett, the innovative Founder of a state-of-the-art ergonomic chair, NuChair, that was designed for people like puzzlers (dentists, tattoo and make-up artists, etc.–people who often sit for long periods with a downward focus.) Mike sent us one of his awesome chairs that we had on display in our booth over the conference and at the workshop. The puzzlers loved the NuChair and we actually bought the sample to use in our office!

One of the best opportunities we had was to lift 3 of the tables in the practice room to bar height with our folding table risers! This gave the puzzlers who were working on the big format puzzles, the opportunity to stand to puzzle. The lifted tables were one of the most popular stations in the room and we were excited to be able to talk to people to ask for their impression of the higher surface.

Leading up to the event, we felt we had well-prepared for what we had affectionately referred to as “our puzzlers!” That said, we had a good feeling about the event, but we really didn’t know what was to come…

My first impression happened quite a bit of time before we even arrived in San Diego. Everything was well-communicated to us by Aly and her team – we knew they were wonderful people before we officially met. But what I didn’t anticipate was how awesome OUR puzzlers would be…

WHO ARE PUZZLERS?

Affectionately referred to as “puzzlers”, they are simply people who (in this case) do jigsaw puzzles for a hobby or for speed competitions. Overall, we found puzzlers are super smart, intellectually curious, patient, persistent, and enjoy the mental challenge and satisfaction that comes from solving puzzles of various kinds. But perhaps the thing I admire about this group the most is: they are also very kind people.

We literally met people from all over the world – from Alfonso Álvarez-Ossorio of Spain, President, World Jigsaw Puzzle Federation, (who stunned us with his puzzling skills as he could figure out how to solve a super challenging puzzle just by looking at the piece shapes (who I also got to practice my Spanish with!) Lisa Moskowitz, with the Orange County Speed Puzzlers.

We were so inspired to meet Linda Maxwell, Brand Manager of Cobble Hill Puzzles, who was so supportive and had so many great ideas for us to grow our brand. Linda also blessed us with a wonderful article on her Cobble Hill Puzzles blog.

We met Susan Way, Co-Founder and owner of Puzzle Warehouse in St. Louis, Missouri, one the largest jigsaw puzzle companies in the world carrying over 10,000 items which now INCLUDES Lift Your Table® folding table risers! Partnering with Puzzle Warehouse excites us as our mission is to save puzzler’s backs.

We had a ball with Zachary Hill with Zacko puzzle boards – a beautiful and useful accessory for puzzlers and Matt Planer, Ecommerce Manager, Masterpieces, Inc. – a company we hope to soon also be available for sale on too!

We connected with Liza Fireman PuzzlesByLiza, a lovely enthusiast who has the largest collection of Ravensburger Puzzles in the world! We were excited to meet puzzle influencers like Karen Puzzles and Gma, Ijustlovepuzzles.

Our puzzlers stole our collective hearts as people and we came away from the convention DETERMINED to do our best to help save their backs!

Reflections on the Experience

Looking back, the US Jigsaw Puzzle Competition and Convention was so much more than just a gathering of puzzle competitors and enthusiasts. It was a celebration of community, creativity, and good old-fashioned fun. As we packed up our booth and said goodbye to our new friends and potential business partners, we couldn’t help but feel grateful for the memories made and the lessons learned along the way.

Discovering the world of puzzlers has been quite a revelation! It’s amazing how diverse hobbies and interests can be. Being invited into this community of puzzlers can open a whole new world of shared experiences, challenges, and camaraderie with relatively little financial investment. Puzzling is a testament to the richness of human interests and the endless ways we find to engage our minds and have fun.

For Lift Your Table®, during this next year, our goal is to continue to build relationships with our new contacts, participate with local puzzle clubs, possibly expand into Australia via the national club there, and ultimately, establish Lift Your Table® folding table risers as a standard fixture for the USA Jigsaw Puzzle speed puzzling competitions so we can SAVE (more) PUZZLER’S BACKS!

Thank you for coming along with us as we shared our experience with our puzzlers. And to our puzzlers I say, keep those brains sharp and those spirits high. Thank You for welcoming us into your world and may we meet again next year with the hope of piecing together another unforgettable adventure!

Shout out to: Aly Krasny United States Jigsaw Puzzle Association and Valerie Coit (Founders and Co-Chairs), Tammy McLeod (Founder and Tech Guru) and Faith Lindell-Taylor (Founder and Treasurer.)

Happy Puzzling!

(And don’t forget: Lift Your Table® & Save Your Back!)

Do you use folding tables in your workplace? Click here to learn more about how we can increase your ergonomics and save your company money.

Are you a puzzler looking to increase the height of your folding table? Click here to learn more, and get a 10% off discount on your first order!