Curious how Completing the Puzzle got started and what goes into making this engine of puzzle joy run? Brian Thomas, the owner of Completing the Puzzle, sat down to chat and shared a bit of what goes on behind the scenes. Read the interview to learn how it all began, what the most fun and challenging parts are, and a sneak peek at some new things that will be launching soon!
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[Interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
It started during COVID. Everyone was locked down and we're like, "What are we going to do to pass time?" We pulled out a jigsaw puzzle and solved it, and we were like, "This is such a fun experience and this puzzle's pretty expensive. We're only going to do it once and then put it back on the shelf." We only had five or so more, so we're like, "What are we going to do on day six?" And the idea sprung into our head: what if we rent this? We looked around and there wasn't really anyone doing it. So I threw up a website on a Sunday and it just took off. People signed up - way more than I expected. It's actually my 10th business and probably the most fun.
I'm a developer at heart. I went to college for computer science, but I was way more interested in work. I barely graduated. I was busy waiting tables, having fun, and I also worked for a startup. In college, I got my first taste of what it was to be a business owner. It was very small and then it was the business owner and myself. And I actually wrote a Blackberry app. that was my first mobile app foray and it was doing project management software for construction workers on a Blackberry. After that, I spent eight years working for the Department of Defense. We did large scale enterprise projects and in Java, and that was a lot of fun. I spent half my time there working at Booz Allen. Booz Allen really empowered young employees to take ownership. They put a lot of us through leadership training, and it helped me understand how to be a better leader, show up as a manager, do things like writing contracts, SOPs, and skills that I appreciate now.
Yeah, definitely. So, after the Department of Defense work, I actually built a learning management system that we ended up selling back to the government, and that got me a taste for doing my own thing. I started a digital agency almost directly after that. At first we just did software development for startups. And we did work for all sorts of small mom and pop people that had ideas that they wanted to bring to life. In the first year, using that exact model, we took 22 people to market. One ended up getting a $7 million series A. From there, my business partner and I pivoted. He ended up going into VR and I went into more enterprise software development. And eventually, I found my way into subscription businesses. I was doing a bunch of work with Shopify clients and particularly on Recharge, which is a subscription app we use for billing and became a Recharge partner. I built a Recharge app and a Shopify app, worked with Hunt a Killer. That's a very large direct-to-consumer subscription brand. I was with them for about two, two and a half years, functioning as their pseudo CTO, CPO, helping out with product and everything.
I do a little bit of everything. As the owner, I get responsibility for cleaning the puzzles to building the website to communicating with vendors, hiring, and everything in between. I built the first version of the website. Now we have some people that help out, but I'm still involved in most of the day-to-day in the back end software. We have our own custom CMS and WMS. So when the customers give us feedback inside the app, it gets pushed to the customer support team in real time.
I love the joy that it brings to people. I think day-to-day, if you follow your passion, you end up hating your passion. So I wasn't necessarily in love with puzzles. I do enjoy doing them. For me, it's actually more of a joint effort. I enjoy puzzling with someone else. It gives you an opportunity to do something together, complete the puzzle together, and that's what I get joy out of. I'm definitely a slow puzzler. But as far as passion and getting excited about the business, it's truly about the customer. We get handwritten notes from our customers when they send back puzzles and I do my best to read every single one of them. Many are pretty positive, but even the negative ones, I take them very seriously, because if someone's gonna take time to write something down, I'll read it and do the best I can, as long as it makes sense for the business, to make the change or talk to someone. I've had a few elderly people reach out and say that they are lonely and I've called them. And so it brings joy. We used to hand write notes back in the beginning. It's too many people at this point but I would love for us to get back to that.
The biggest challenge is... so, this is actually my first physical ship business. All the rest, I was consulting, had Shopify apps plugins or different SaaS products. This being the first physical ship company, it's the vendors, especially on the shipping side. For the big ones like USPS, DHL, and all those, no matter what scale you're at, unless you're Amazon, you're pretty small and they control the cards. So it's hard learning the landscape and understanding where we fit in and negotiating the deals takes much longer than I thought. A few of the deals have taken almost two years to put together. It's a lot of back and forth, a lot of legal jargon. I feel like I'm a lawyer now - not something I really wanted to get into, but it's necessary to keep the business going. I'm always trying to negotiate new rates, lower rates, faster shipping, but there are so many outside forces, from tariffs to government regulations to private businesses wanting to switch stuff up. In a moment's notice, a large carrier can just let us go. Most of them have 30 to 90 day cures and we're gone. It's happened and it'll probably happen again. We do the best we can to just get the best shipping carrier provider to our customers. We've made a lot of strides recently, and I'm really excited this year for the new shipping providers we're bringing on. Especially on the return side, I think we're going to see something cool.
On the return side, can't give away too many secrets, but we're gonna have a very large opportunity for customers to switch up the style in which they return their packages. It's something that's been in the works for several years and it's finally coming true, so I'm really excited about that. To coincide with it, we have a mobile app coming out. I've done majority of the development on that and had some help from an outside source. So it's cool.
I appreciate everybody! I love that the employees have become so close. It's fun to see a lot of them thrive. I make a very concerted effort to hire then promote within, and seeing a few of them rise up in the ranks is so inspiring. It's one of the things that keeps me going, in addition to customer feedback. It's overwhelmingly positive and just hearing people say how much they love getting the puzzles. Even the critical feedback, as long as it's actionable, I enjoy hearing it and it helps me know that people are passionate about it and they want their puzzles faster. It is something that we're working on. I just feel incredibly happy and blessed to be in this situation to have a great team and great membership.
