We’re adding a fantastic new brand to our puzzle rental catalog - a big, warm welcome to Puzzles of Color! Puzzles of Color is a small, Black-owned and family run business based in Dallas, Texas - which is where our warehouse is located, so they're our neighbors! Siblings Ericka and William, lifelong puzzlers, founded the company, and William’s wife Aimee is central to their marketing and social media.
We were able to interview William and Aimee to learn more about their passion for puzzles, art, celebrating culture and more. Read the interview below and/or watch the full video on our YouTube channel.
[Interview has been edited for length and clarity. Photos courtesy of Puzzles of Color.]
WILLIAM: Me and my sister grew up doing puzzles as a way to bond. And we always felt like we never saw ourselves in our puzzles. We always felt like we need to see more representation, more artists of color that could be represented in this space. And that's what we set out to create in 2019. 2020 was when we actually launched it. We just wanted to really bring some more beautiful art and artists of color’s work out into the forefront.
AIMEE: I never really did puzzles growing up. When I was a kid, every day from when we got out of school until the sun goes down, I was outside. William tried to get me to get into it before they started the business. And I was like, “Eh, not really a puzzler.” But eventually, I just started helping out with putting some puzzles together so that we could put them on display. And then it was actually pretty fun.
I think some of the puzzles for me, it gives a good perspective in the business because we try to do some puzzles that are easier or good for beginners. When you have William and Ericka who've been doing puzzles their whole life, they see any art and they're like, “Oh, this will be great.” And then I come in with the voice of reason like, “Oh, this is going to be very hard for newbies.”
AIMEE: I really like to organize my pieces. I don't like the chaotic, put all the pieces out and then just try to figure out where things go. They have to be organized. They have to be by color, by shape sometimes. And I'll spend a whole day doing that first before I even touch the puzzle. For me, I'm still not there where I can just throw pieces together.
WILLIAM: I'm more just put them on the table and just go. I sort of the edges out and after that, I just kind of go, “Oh, this goes there” or whatever. We definitely got to put on a playlist. We have a playlist for each puzzle.
WILLIAM: I was always a thousand piece puzzle person growing up. I think as I got older, I started to appreciate the 500 pieces more. I mean, l can get it done faster. But overall, I like a challenging puzzle that can take me some time. Our Harriet Tubman piece, we made two different samples because the darkness of it, we don't want to be too challenging. We want it to be still somewhat hard, but the original one was super dark. It was a good challenge to finish it. But we want the right option to make it more fun for everybody else. But I think the challenging puzzles are my type of a puzzle to do.
WILLIAM: It's overall fun. There's times where we hate each other, but most of the time we love each other. It's not too bad. Everybody has their own skill set that we let them own depending on what the situation is. Like Aimee, she does the marketing, social media and stuff like that for us. I do the packaging and design stuff. Ericka does more the administrative work, retailers and partnerships and stuff. So we all have our fields of operation.
AIMEE: It's kind of like how you would imagine a family dynamic. William's my husband so I'm like, “Hey, I need you to do this” and it's not a typical “go to the office” and you see your coworker and you're like, “Respectfully, can I get something.” And then Ericka and William are brother and sister. So imagine an older sister telling her younger brother what to do and bossing him around. And the younger brother is like, “No, I'm not doing that.” Both of William and Ericka's parents are involved in the business, so you have the mom and dad who are just like, “this is” -
WILLIAM: Give their opinion.
AIMEE: “This is my opinion and I would really like for you, son, to do this.” So it's definitely a family dynamic. We come together and we eat dinner together and dinners turn into business conversation. And I think we have become a little bit more intentional with trying to keep the lines of business and family and making sure that we're running it honestly as a business rather than with emotion and the dynamic.
WILLIAM: I mean, there's a lot of different situations when we started. We had our own puzzle die machine. So we would cut our puzzles in the garage at my sister's house. And that was fun times. It was winter time too when we started, so it was cold out there in the garage. A friend of mine helped cut the puzzles because you need to be working 24 hours at some point, which obviously never got done. But we did what we could during that time, straight cutting puzzles. Overall, I just remember researching and trying to figure out how to start a puzzle company because it was something new to us and getting quotes for pricing of stuff was a shocker.
AIMEE: Yeah, I think whenever we had started, we were just like, “Oh, we're going to get a few sales here and there, we're going to try to sell it to our family and friends on social media.” And then we had a connection with a news anchor and we were like, “Okay, we're going to be on the local news in Dallas. We'll pre-cut like, 100 puzzles so that we can sell them from the news.” And we ended up getting like, 5,000 orders. That was stressful. I don't even remember doing anything else during that time besides cutting puzzles or customer service, telling people that they were going to be a little bit late. It was probably the one of the hardest points of the business but we got through it. We figured it out.
WILLIAM: We find a lot of artists through social media. We follow hashtags and things of that nature trying to find the right art to tell the story that we like to portray. We want to sell positive messages of people of color and celebrate cultural moments, which we do with our Celebrature Line. We look through socials and then we contact them via Instagram DMs or emails. People email us a lot too. We get a lot of artist submissions and we look it up and it was people who we think are great for what we're looking for. And events as well.
AIMEE: Some artists reach out to us and they say, “Oh, we really love what you're doing. We'd love for you to take a look at my work.” So we love when artists do that. And we can look and see what kind of work they have and if it fits for a puzzle. Sometimes the art is really, really good but we know it's not going to work for a puzzle. You kind of feel bad because you have to tell people “no” sometimes, even though it's no reflection on how good their art is. But we have to think about, “How is this going to fit in a 500 piece or a thousand piece puzzle?” So we get to find a lot of artists that way. They find us. And it’s really cool to see some things that we might not have seen before by them reaching out.
WILLIAM: Our puzzles are like art to us, so we wanted to have a matte finish. I thought that was really important to us to have a piece of art you have on your wall. And then as far as the dies, we like unique shapes. We have a mix of unique and more ribbon cut but definitely like the more unique cuts because it's fun or can allow you to know what shape you’re looking for. Basically, it's on what we like. And then, of course, feedback from our first couple of collections, an idea of what people also like, that helped as well.
AIMEE: We try to make sure that the colors look great and we want it to be vibrant.
AIMEE: I love that a lot of people see themselves or their stories in the art. It's a story that resonates with them or a story that resonates with someone who they know or love. I love when we go to events. We went to L.A. and we had this girl walk by the booth. She had this huge fro and she walked past. She was walking pretty fast, but she stopped in her tracks when she saw our booth and her face, she's just like, “Oh my gosh, I have never seen this. I've never seen puzzles like this.” People ask me sometimes, because I change my hair all the time, “Is this you?” So I really like that feedback of seeing a different perspective in the art and really enjoying the work that the artists have done.
WILLIAM: We just launched five new puzzles, our Pride collection. And then we have another puzzle coming. We have a few Celebrature - our cultural moment puzzles - we're going to drop. We're super excited about those coming out. We have a little bit of merch.
AIMEE: Tell her about the Celebrature.
WILLIAM: Oh, my fault, my fault. So, you know, the Beyonce tour is coming. So we're going to do a puzzle for celebrating Cowboy Carter. We found the artist that's really great for what we're looking for and we're excited about that. I'll probably get the sample in today or tomorrow.
AIMEE: We just launched a rewards program as well. So people who are purchasing puzzles with us can now get rewards with every puzzle purchase and then they can get stuff like free glue, free magnets, different prizes, different discounts. Once you set up the rewards program, you get an automatic five dollar off on a purchase of your choosing. Hopefully, this year we're also going to be launching a referral program as well. So people who refer us to other customers will get special perks. We have a lot of stuff for the social perks and we would love to hear feedback on what kind of puzzles, what kind of art. We love when people send us artists that they like to see. So we would love to do that and share that cultural moment on social media too.
AIMEE: No, I think, just shop our Pride collection. We have some new pieces and the pride is about being proud of who you are and the culture you come from and proud of yourself, proud of your family, proud of the things that bring you nostalgia. Just being proud of life.
WILLIAM: We also do custom puzzles. So you got your own moment you want to celebrate, we can do that for you as well.