Until March last year, Jigsaw Puzzles Australia mostly made individual personalised jigsaws of various sizes using customer's photographs, and the occasional small -scale corporate order.

But once the pandemic hit and lockdowns began, demand for puzzles soared and corporate requests for orders as large as 1500 puzzles.

At the same time as orders soared Peter and wife Susan, who founded the business 15 years ago, faced issues with getting paper products and boxes from their suppliers in China.

In response they looked to local companies to supply what they needed, and eventually decided to make boxes themselves after watching many videos on box making.

"What we produced up until COVID come along was about 90 per cent individual one-off puzzles based on dogs or cats or families where customers gave us a photo and we made a puzzle out of it," Mr Begbie said.

"Then when COVID arrived all of a sudden we sarted to get big corporate orders because companies were buying puzzles for staff to do at home when they had nothing much else to do.

"We were not really set up to do bulk orders because we don't mass produce - every one is an individual for us and it still is - but we've done orders of up to 1500, 1000 piece puzzles and lots of orders of hundreds at a time.

"We basically doubled our production numbers when COVID hit."

Staff numbers also jumped from the couple to a total of six.

Feedback from customers is something that puts a smile on their faces, and something mentioned in a nomination of the company for the 2021 Victorian Community Achievement Awards.

"One of the business successes is when individual customers tell us how much the puzzles mean to them," Susan wrote in a nomination.

"One woman received a puzzle from her daughter. The image was that of her and her late husband. She said that in due time, she would use the puzzle has a tool to help her grief. Another customer told us that the puzzles were used as a memory aid for her mother who was suffering from dementia. Her mother remembered the places and it was a talking tool. This always brings a smile and tear listening to these stories."

Mr Begbie liked jigsaw puzzles as a child, but has never put a large puzzle together.

"We had a gift shop in Ballarat and I used to go to the gift fairs. At one fair in China I saw this puzzle maker and I thought that's not a bad way to go ... and that's where the idea came from but it's the sort if industry where there's hardly anyone it in - you can't go to anyone and ask if you've got a problem, you have to sort it out yourself and we've done a lot of that over 15 years, and over the last 18 months."

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And Mr Begbie has plans for the future - he's just not sure when he'll get time to advance them.

He'd like to build another building to open a gallery of Indigenous art and take orders for puzzles from that art to help Indigenous artists, and create a website where customers can make puzzles from the works of Australian artists and photographers.

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