A games house from 1894 and a puzzle maker from 1967.

Educa is the puzzle brand of Educa Borras, a games company based in Sant Quirze del Vallès, in the province of Barcelona. The company in its present form is the product of a merger. Spanish Wikipedia, citing the Catalan business site Via Empresa in December 2014, says it took shape in 2001, when Educa, founded in 1967, was absorbed by Borrás Plana, a firm founded in 1894. The company counts its history from the older date: a 2021 article by its cartonboard supplier, the Austrian packaging group MM, describes Educa Borras as dating back to 1894.

The two names still divide the catalogue between them. Spanish Wikipedia lists Educa as the brand for puzzles and educational games, Borras as the name on board games and magic sets, and TENTE as the brand for construction toys.

The group has grown by acquisition within the Spanish toy trade. The Alicante business paper AlicantePlaza reported in May 2021 that Educa Borras had bought Fábrica de Juguetes, a toy maker in Ibi, in 2012 — a company that had earlier absorbed the Chicos brand — and had bought all of Ninco, the radio-controlled and slot-car maker, in 2018. In 2021, the paper reported, Ninco Desarrollos was merged into Fábrica de Juguetes, which was renamed FDJ Ninco and kept its base in Ibi. AlicantePlaza described Fábrica de Juguetes as a specialist in children’s whiteboards, desks, ride-on toys and role-play toys, and noted that Ninco, originally a Catalan company, had moved its registered office to Ibi under the group.

Cartonboard, print and a factory near Barcelona.

Ownership sits one level above the operating company. AlicantePlaza reported in May 2021 that Educa Borras is controlled by a holding company, Team Toys, and that its president is José Maxenchs. The same report described the group, before the 2021 merger in Ibi, as three Spanish companies plus a subsidiary in Hong Kong, and said that Maxenchs was also the sole administrator of the renamed FDJ Ninco, which kept formal independence within the group.

On manufacturing, Educa Borras makes a consistent claim. In January 2017 the trade title Alimarket, reporting a distribution alliance between Educa Borras and the electronics group KD Group, recorded that Educa Borras manufactures most of its products at its own facilities in Barcelona; the 2021 MM article says the same of its games, made at facilities near Barcelona. Spanish Wikipedia places the company in Sant Quirze del Vallès. Under the 2017 alliance, Alimarket reported, KD Group’s British arm took on distribution of the Educa and Chicos brands in the United Kingdom. Alimarket identified KD Group as the trading name of Cide Group Holdings, a Barcelona-based maker of children’s electronics whose brands include Kurio, whose Spanish distribution was handled by Cefatoys, part of KD Group since 2014.

The material is part of the look. MM’s April 2021 article says Educa Borras prints its jigsaw puzzles on Multicolor Mirabell, a recycled cartonboard made by MM, and quotes Montserrat Vergel, head of Educa Borras’s technical department: “Especially with very detailed puzzle subjects, the printing quality is essential.” She added that the company chose the board because the print quality on it had turned out to be particularly high. The same article describes a puzzle range running from simple animal puzzles for toddlers to puzzles designed with older adults in mind.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all jigsaw puzzle makers: Clementoni, Educa, Schmidt Spiele, Piatnik, Trefl, Wentworth and Liberty Puzzles. Puzzle brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to larger toy and games groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a toy shop to a museum gift store.

A puzzle brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single picture than by a box, a name and the way its pieces are cut, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its puzzles are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its puzzles are made and how its boxes have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Licences, partners and a name that travels.

Licensing is part of the Educa catalogue. The Australian licensing trade title The Bugg Report reported in March 2019 that the emoji company had extended its partnership with Educa Borras for a new puzzle range under the emoji brand, launched in Spain and Portugal under the Fix Puzzle name, following an emoji puzzle Educa Borras had released the year before, and quoted Marco Hüsges, chief executive of the emoji company: “We are excited to continue our partnership with Educa Borras.” The 2017 KD Group agreement, as Alimarket described it, was a two-way arrangement covering Spain and the United Kingdom, under which each company would distribute the other’s products.

Across the group, Educa sits on the puzzle boxes, Borras on the magic sets and board games, TENTE on the construction toys, and the merged company keeps all three rather than folding them into one, alongside Chicos and Ninco from its Ibi subsidiary. Borrás Plana, founded in 1894, is the reason the company gives 1894 as its starting point, more than a century before the merger that produced Educa Borras in 2001.

For a design guide, Educa shows how a puzzle maker’s identity rests as much on print, board and the image on the lid as on a logo — compare Clementoni, the family firm from Recanati, and Piatnik of Vienna. For this guide we use Catalan red, saffron and Mediterranean blue with a grotesque sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Educa’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.