Assembling the Pieces

One of the clear winners of the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen people – voluntarily or not – spending unprecedented amounts of time at home, is the puzzle and games sector.

“We never would have thought that things would develop like this,” the head of the Ravensburg games company, Clemens Maier, told business newspaper Handelsblatt. “Doing jigsaw puzzles has become fashionable.”

Maier says that his firm’s turnover in puzzles increased by roughly twenty percent in 2020. The pandemic has bolstered an already existing trend: Ravensburg’s total annual turnover rose by seven percent in 2019, reaching EUR 524 million.

Industry insiders predict that when the final figures for 2020 become known, turnover in games in Germany will have increased by eight percent to EUR 3.7 billion.