The premise from which this new company has decided to proceed is interesting, though I'm not convinced that a multitude of fans/customers will be attracted by that. For myself, I'd feel more engaged right away if I could ponder more than just the single puzzle. Perhaps, a company debut with several images on display would have garnered greater attention. I'd like to have been able to view, for example, a skiing puzzle, an ironman competition puzzle, a rock-climbing puzzle, etc., in addition to the biking puzzle. I do wish the company well, especially after reading about their accommodations to you and correspondences with you. Customer service is so important!
Your write-up is thorough and impressive, as always. I enjoyed learning more about Chinese puzzles, too. Your digressions and spoiler alerts do not dismay me at all. Thank you for your work.
Thanks, Greg. While I agree that having images of more than one puzzle would give a better indication of the range of outdoor recreation interests this company intends to engage with I think that the various sports represented by the variety of whimsies covers that. I would expect that extreme sports participants, and even just folks who like watching the X-Games on TV, would not be deterred from enjoying this puzzle if their own personal favourite sport was something other than mountain biking.
I think of this puzzle as a proof of concept for Alex McWhorter. He was on a lot of new learning curves by starting this company and I can fully understand his choice of fully developing one puzzle, and getting feedback from its reception, before launching other ones to expand his offerings. Because this image follows the contours of the image, every additional puzzle would require both a new image and a new cutting design. That would be quite a large investment before he even knows whether there is in fact a market for jigsaw puzzles that cater to the interests of adrenaline junkies.
Greg, as you requested I removed this inadvertent duplicate of your other post.
The premise from which this new company has decided to proceed is interesting, though I'm not convinced that a multitude of fans/customers will be attracted by that. For myself, I'd feel more engaged right away if I could ponder more than just the single puzzle. Perhaps, a company debut with several images on display would have garnered greater attention. I'd like to have been able to view, for example, a skiing puzzle, an ironman competition puzzle, a rock-climbing puzzle, etc., in addition to the biking puzzle. I do wish the company well, especially after reading about their accommodations to you and correspondences with you. Customer service is so important!
Your write-up is thorough and impressive, as always. I enjoyed learning more about Chinese puzzles, too. Your digressions and spoiler alerts do not dismay me at all. Thank you for your work.
Thanks, Greg. While I agree that having images of more than one puzzle would give a better indication of the range of outdoor recreation interests this company intends to engage with I think that the various sports represented by the variety of whimsies covers that. I would expect that extreme sports participants, and even just folks who like watching the X-Games on TV, would not be deterred from enjoying this puzzle if their own personal favourite sport was something other than mountain biking.
I think of this puzzle as a proof of concept for Alex McWhorter. He was on a lot of new learning curves by starting this company and I can fully understand his choice of fully developing one puzzle, and getting feedback from its reception, before launching other ones to expand his offerings. Because this image follows the contours of the image, every additional puzzle would require both a new image and a new cutting design. That would be quite a large investment before he even knows whether there is in fact a market for jigsaw puzzles that cater to the interests of adrenaline junkies.
Thanks for those insights, Bill—quite persuasive!