Piecework Puzzles is known for being the one-stop-shop for oh-so-special gifts. To date, the company has expanded from puzzle designs into cocktail napkins, curated gift collections, and collaborated with brands ranging from goop to Broccoli magazine. The growth strategies that founders Rachel Hochhauser and Jena Wolfe have used often boil down to one thing: understanding their brand identity so well that they instinctively know what belongs—and what doesn’t.

Rachel and Jena started Piecework as a side project while running their creative agency, Major Studio. After a rainy Yosemite weekend spent working on jigsaw puzzles, Rachel pitched Jena on creating design-forward puzzles with modern, maximalist aesthetics that people would want to display. 

 

Six years later, their approach to product expansion offers a master class in how to grow beyond your initial offering without losing what made customers fall in love with you in the first place.

Building a brand strong enough to stretch

From day one, Piecework established a distinctive identity that went against prevailing trends. “Everyone was doing beige on beige and lots of whites,” says Jena. “We knew right away we wanted this to be super bold, colorful, and maximalist, with competing, cool colors.”

This approach extended to every detail. They used multiple exclamation points—three, four, or five at a time—instead of following typical business communication rules. Each puzzle became its own “world,” with themed packaging designed to look more like an art book than a traditional game box. Titles were designed to run down the box spine in a way that let the puzzles be displayed like a growing collection on a shelf.

The packaging decision proved crucial for another reason: positioning. “We didn’t want to only operate in the puzzle and games market,” Jena explains. “We really wanted to be in this broader gifting market and compete with a bottle of wine or something that you might bring to someone’s home for a housewarming.” By treating puzzles as design objects rather than games, they created Instagram-friendly products that drove organic social growth.

The “Tomato World” experiment that changed everything

Piecework’s napkin line—now a significant part of the brand’s wholesale business—emerged from a marketing campaign, not a strategic planning session. Last summer, Rachel and Jena launched a tomato-themed puzzle called Tomato. Tomahto. To create buzz around it, they developed Tomato World, a microsite featuring tomato-themed products.

The problem? There weren’t a lot of tomato-themed products out there, and a lot of the ones that were weren’t to their taste or didn’t match Piecework’s established brand. Rachel and Jena’s solution reflected the same experimental mindset that launched the company: “Kind of similar to how we decided to make four puzzles, no big deal,” Rachel says. “We’ll just make some tomato-themed products.”

The tomato napkins did “really, really well,” surprising both founders. “They were fairly easy to produce. So we ended up making sardine napkins next, and then those did really well,” Rachel says. Made from 100% linen, the cocktail napkins became particularly successful in wholesale channels.

The lesson wasn’t just that napkins worked—it was that following their brand instincts, even in unexpected directions, could uncover new opportunities.

Learning what fits (and what doesn’t)

Not every expansion succeeded. Piecework also launched candles, which seemed like a natural fit for its gifting positioning. But the candles revealed what happens when timing and execution aren’t quite right.

“We went too soon,” Rachel admits. “It was a good learning moment for us when we were rushing to get a product to a market in time for a certain arbitrary deadline versus slowing down and getting it to the place we really wanted it to be.” The quality was fine—“They were really high quality and we loved the scents,” Rachel says—but other elements didn’t align. The margins weren’t there, and from a design perspective, Rachel adds, “we wanted to push them just 15% further than where we got them.”

Meanwhile, Piecework’s curated products section evolved from customer requests. “We had customers reaching out to us about some of the objects that were in the puzzles, asking what they were or where they could get them,” Rachel explains. It felt like a really natural extension to start pulling those puzzle worlds out above and beyond the puzzle. This curation drives higher average order values and increased traffic, but it’s also helpful for incubating new products and getting to know what people are buying. 

When brand partnerships reinforce identity

Piecework’s collaborations span an impressive range of partners: goop, Broccoli magazine, Better Homes & Gardens, Mod, Great Jones, Crate & Barrel, and New York magazine. Yet each partnership feels distinctly Piecework.

“There’s an interesting range in our tone that can go from high fashion to vibey design to total kitsch,” Jena says. “There’s a lot of space to play.” The brand’s Better Homes & Gardens puzzle, featuring baking and interiors, “feels very Piecework,” says Rachel. “On the other end of the spectrum, our first puzzle for Broccoli magazine featured a bunch of flowers smoking joints, and that was also very Piecework. They’re not necessarily the same customer, but they’re both Piecework customers.”

The key to partnership success? Clarity about objectives. “Go into every partnership clear about what you want to get out of it. It can’t be everything,” Rachel advises. “Some partnerships are for an exchange in brand equity.”

These partnerships also became opportunities for connection, with collaborators often joining Rachel’s “advice tours,” where she schedules 15-minute calls with friends and industry contacts to help troubleshoot a problem.

The freedom of staying bootstrapped

What enabled this experimental brand-first approach? Rachel and Jena remained bootstrapped and kept their full-time jobs—meaning they “worked on the company for years without paying ourselves,” Rachel says. In addition to running Piecework, Jena also leads marketing at goop Kitchen full-time, while Rachel balances puzzles her writing career (her first novel, Lady Tremaine, a twisty retelling of Cinderella, comes out in March 2026).

This unconventional structure gave the duo something invaluable: “We don’t get caught in 25 rounds of approval with 35 people and a bunch of boardrooms,” Rachel says. “We can do what we want and, for better or worse, you know, we’ve made mistakes too. But at the end of the day, it’s our creative playpen.”

Six years in, that playpen has proven surprisingly scalable. Whatever comes next, both founders’ intuitive understanding of what fits their brand will ensure it’s unmistakably Piecework.

To hear more from Rachel and Jena about their manufacturing challenges, advice tours methodology, and how they think about holiday planning as a puzzle company, listen to their full interview on Shopify Masters.