Inventor seeks profit in packs of perforated puzzle pieces

Rubik's Cube sold 100 million puzzles as people worldwide paid to align the little plastic squares.

David Gaskill, sole proprietor of Reno Puzzle Co., hopes his creation, AQUBE, will be an equally big hit with puzzlers.

"Research says that 1 to 2 percent of the population would purchase a puzzle," says Gaskill. "That's 3,000 to 5,000 in the Reno-Sparks market alone." And nationally, that would translate to nearly 5 million people.

He got the idea when studying mathematics binary principals of zeroes and ones that comprise all computer code. The resultant puzzle, he says, is a challenge of logic and assembly.

AQUBE is snapped together using 16 uniquely shaped pairs. The initial puzzle prototype had 32 pieces, but it proved too challenging. Gaskill himself could not solve it even after three frustrating hours.

So he reduced the number of pieces to make a game that he says, "A diligent person can solve in an hour."

(Those who can't solve it can take a peek at the cheat sheet posted on the company Web site renopuzzle.com.)

At first glance, AQUBE looks simple. But its development was not.

Gaskill played with the idea in his head for 20 years. Then spent another two years taking it commercial. The end result was a production run of 400 units that sell for $24.99 each. He launched with 60 preorders and sold 235 as holiday gifts.

Before choosing Triad Plastics in Reno to manufacture the puzzle, Gaskill checked out options in China and San Diego. But there's an advantage to having someone local, he says. "You needn't get on a plane to do a quality check."

A progression of prototypes paved the path to puzzle production.

He first tried wood, but couldn't get accuracy. Next came metal, and the machined prototype cost $2,000 for a 32-piece puzzle the one that proved too difficult to solve.

"It was a steppingstone," says Gaskill of the failure.

Production began by hiring a computer drafter to build digital files of the design, and a mold was cast from that computer file. The mold cost $26,000. Each pair of the 16 unique pieces cost 80 cents. Plastic boxes for packaging cost 28 cents each, but a minimum order was 10,000. Labels were 25 cents each with a minimum order of 2,000.

Another cost was the cloth bag that's enclosed to hold the loose pieces should one be unable to rebuild AQUBE.

Gaskill figures upfront costs at $50,000. The low-volume run meant each puzzle cost more than $13 to produce.

To get costs down the next time around, says Gaskill, he would retool the mold, another $75,000 investment.

But should it come to that, he says, "I would look for investment capital. I already broke one of the rules. Never use your own money."

He hopes that's about to change and has booked at the Games Expo in March, a trade show featuring specialty non-electronic puzzles and games. From that, Gaskill sees three possible outcomes: Someone will buy the idea straight out. It might be licensed for royalty payments. Or, Reno Puzzles will produce, distribute and sell the product.

And there's more product to come. Gaskill has developed variations on the initial configuration and plans to produce more puzzles in more colors.

Puzzles make people happy, he says.

"At work we complete our daily tasks but our minds strive for more," he says. "Aristotle said, 'Man thirsts for knowledge.'"