The Colorado company uses high-tech laser cutting machines to create heirloom-quality puzzles out of quarter-inch plywood, cut into unique “whimsy pieces.”
Chris Wirth and Jeff Eldridge created Liberty Puzzles in 2005 with the idea that intricate wooden jigsaw puzzles would entertain and bring families together.
With Christmas and Hannukah just weeks away, families will gather for plenty of food and fun. But there will be idle hours, too, and many have solved that dilemma with an old-school style, American-made jigsaw puzzle manufactured by Liberty Puzzles.
A 2024 Made in America Holiday Gift Guide selection, Liberty Puzzles offer heirloom quality puzzles for a challenging, fun way to interact with family and friends.
“Our jigsaw puzzles are a social vehicle and that’s what we’ve been trying to do all along,” said Wirth, a father of three boys. “Everyone is gathered around, and you need something to do and jigsaw puzzles are perfect. It brings all the generations together.”
Liberty Puzzles creates top-quality wooden puzzles and is the largest craft, wood puzzle manufacturer in the United States. With its modern technology, using 90 laser cutting machines at either of its two factories in Boulder, Colorado, the company can produce a 500-piece puzzle from each machine in 45 minutes.
It’s a rags-to-riches story, as after a slow start demand for the puzzles has now become overwhelming.
“After almost 20 years, it is still hard to meet the demand for our puzzles,” Wirth said. “Our entire business cycle is geared toward the fourth quarter. We make Santa Claus puzzles all summer. We like to say it’s Christmas every day here at Liberty Puzzles.”
But the demand for the throwback, wooden puzzles was not always a logistical problem.
“In the beginning we weren’t making any money,” Wirth said. “For the first three years it was hard when I had three small children, and I would lay awake at night thinking this is a terrible decision.
“Eventually we turned the corner and we’ve seen about 20- to 30-percent growth every single year and when you think of 20 years, it is a lot. We’ve seen sustained growth and when the pandemic hit, that really sent the demand through the roof and now we are up to 130 employees.”
The idea of launching a wooden puzzle company came to Wirth on a family vacation in Mexico. His great aunt had given Wirth’s parents antique puzzles that were hand-cut outside of Cleveland in the 1930s.
“When the Great Depression came along and people needed cheap home entertainment with so many people out of work, jigsaw puzzles fit that bill,” Wirth said. “My great-grandmother was friends with the women that cut them at a company called Falls Puzzles in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
“My family inherited about 100 of these puzzles, but my mom did not start showing them to me and my sister until we were in our teens. She didn’t want to show them to us when we were kids because they are quite fragile and quite valuable. We started bringing them with us on family vacations when we were in our 20s.
“One day we were down in Puerto Vallarta, and it was raining and we were stuck inside all day. I was sitting next to my brother-in-law, and we were working on this big Falls puzzle all day and that is when the lightbulb went off. I said out loud, ‘I bet I can make and sell these things.’”
Wirth’s intuition became reality, and his American-made puzzles have become a hit all over the world.
Unlike die-cut, cardboard puzzles, Liberty’s are wooden and filled with what are called “whimsy” pieces that are in the shape of a character, animal, flower, or a geometric shape that is recognizable. They fit the theme of the image on the puzzle, such as Charlie Brown on a Peanuts puzzle or The Cat in the Hat in a Dr. Seuss image.
But Liberty Puzzle images run the gamut from animals and cartoon characters to replications of fine art by Van Gogh and Monet.
“Van Gogh and Monet you can do because anything that was created before 1924 is automatically in the public domain,” Wirth said. “We also license our images that we print and stick on our puzzles from about 50 different contemporary artists and those include institutions like Peanuts and Dr. Seuss.”
Wirth likes to consider the pandemic years as the third coming of the jigsaw puzzle craze, when once again, people were stuck inside their homes and looking for fun stimulating projects.
“It was lucky we expanded because during the pandemic we still could not keep up with the 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 the space for all of our laser cutting machines.”
A Liberty puzzle begins with a designed image produced by a large ink jet printer that is then glued to a ¼ -inch piece of plywood. From there it is sent to the laser cutting machines that are programmed to cut the wood pieces of the puzzle.
The most popular Liberty puzzle is a grizzly bear that when completed is not square, but is in the shape of the bear itself. Also popular are custom-made puzzles where you can submit an image of your choice to become a puzzle if the image does not fall under copyright laws.
At this time, Liberty is not accepting any custom orders until January. But there are more than 1,000 in-stock puzzles to choose from. Many of the puzzles are of Christmas and animal themes.
“The most popular puzzles tend to be the newest stuff that comes out,” Wirth said. “We have so many returning customers that everything sells the best right when it comes out because everyone wants the newest stuff.
“Our prices are in the $44 to $225 range, with most at $115, which is in the 500-piece range which is by far our most popular size. It’s the perfect size for a small group of adults for one to two nights of puzzling.”
Liberty Puzzles are available online but hurry, because in-stock puzzle sales will close on Dec. 15.