Former Baden business owners enjoying puzzling success with new venture

Mary and Rick Schmidt with their jigsaw puzzles made using Rick Schmidt’s original photography. Photos courtesy of Rick Schmidt

Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

After running a framed-photo business selling original, framed photography to retail stores and direct to customers from their shop in Baden for more than 20 years, a Waterloo couple is enjoying a new kind of success after pivoting to the sale of high-quality jigsaw puzzles featuring those same original photos.

Rick and Mary Schmidt, owners of Gifts from the Heart, which prior to the pandemic was located in Baden but is now operated from their home in Waterloo, first decided to pivot to photography using Rick Schmidt’s photos back in the early days the COVID-19 pandemic when sales of framed photos began to drop. Since then, the pair has sold more than 15,000 puzzles featuring original photos from across Canada and close to home to retail businesses from coast to coast and direct to costumers through their website.

“I kept posting my pictures on Facebook and people said, ‘Why don’t you make puzzles out of them?’ ” Rick Schmidt said. “It was just the beginning stages of COVID and Mary was very adamant that we weren’t going to order from China, but then we started sourcing options in Canada and the States and it was very, very difficult. In Canada, (having puzzles made) was very expensive. The ones we could find were just kind of mom-and-pop organizations that just made a few here and there, and they weren’t that well done.”

“And I have done puzzles for years since I was a young girl,” added Mary Schmidt. “So, I knew what kind of puzzles we wanted. Rick doesn’t do puzzles. He kind of jokes that he doesn’t have the patience for puzzles. … With puzzles, there are all kinds of different ones made. Some are loosey goosey, kind of; they fall apart when you put them together and they’re not firm, they’re not thick enough or they’re really small. I’ve had puzzles that I’ve started and then I threw them back in the box, so I was very particular about the way the product would come out.”

When they looked for a puzzle manufacturer in the U.S., the Schmidts found they would have to order a minimum of 5,000 puzzles in the first order, which didn’t make sense as that part of their business was just starting off and the cost per puzzle would have been more than what they could wholesale them for. Ultimately, they found a manufacturer in China that could make top-quality puzzles at the right price with an order of just 1,000 puzzles to start.

In that first order, the Schmidts were able to create puzzles with five different designs. Since then, their online catalogue has expanded to 30 different puzzles, which they order to a warehouse and dock in Elmira before transporting them by Uhaul trailer back to their garage in Waterloo, where they sort and package them.

“Though chronic fatigue made it difficult for me to handle boxes, Mary loved sorting and organizing them in our garage where we added shelves to store them on,” Rick Schmidt said. “We learned that handling half a box of 10 was much easier for both of us. Reinforcing the shelves was an urgent need after over 100 puzzles came tumbling down on Mary. Thankfully this only happened once and very few were damaged, and Mary wasn’t hurt too badly, but the new shelving brackets were up in less than a day.”

The puzzles feature backdrops and landmarks from across the country, each appealing to retail stores located in the provinces and regions featured. The Schmidts, who already travelled frequently across the country to sell their framed photos, would take the time during their trips to stop so Rick Schmidt could take photos.

In addition to the scenic landmarks and backdrops, Rick Schmidt takes photos of things like old cars, barns and tractors, as well birds, canoes, farmers market stands and other things he can place in the foregrounds of his designs using Photoshop.

“For our company before, we sold across Canada at gift shows, so we had been selling photos to stores right across Canada,” Mary Schmidt said. “Our best sellers were Peggy’s Cove and Banff, so we did those designs for some of our first ones, and we did a couple (designs) from the area around here. We basically used different photos from across Canada for those initial puzzles.”

While the Schmidts had a list of retailers they had sold to previously, they wanted to bring their puzzles to even more stores across the country.

“We loved travelling and so we loaded up the Rav4 and headed out,” Rick Schmidt said. “At first, it was a little daunting – just walk into a store and ask for the buyer to see if they would be interested in buying our Canadian puzzles. … It became easier and many stores were very receptive and helped us make our puzzle story possible. Many Home Hardware stores were expanding into gifts, toys and other lines and were very open to trying out puzzles, especially when we provided free shipping if they bought right then, right out of our car.” 

Currently, the Schmidts have four puzzle designs featuring scenery and landmarks in the Waterloo Region and the surrounding area. They include the “Harvest Market, Wellesley” puzzle featuring the Fall Harvest Farm Market, the “Abraham Erb’s Mill, Waterloo” puzzle, two “Mennonite Story” puzzles featuring the St. Jacobs Farmers Market, and the “Old Trucks and Tractors” puzzle featuring a barn in Amulree as a backdrop.

Thanks to those photos, the Schmidts say they have a lot of support from local residents, and many stores in Kitchener-Waterloo and throughout the Waterloo Region, including New Hamburg Home Hardware and Schmidtsville Restaurant in Wellesley, sell their puzzles.

For more information, to see the Schmidts puzzles and to browse their other merchandise, visit www.giftsfromtheheart.art.