Subdued celebrations: 20 years!

Blog entry for April 2022

It seems incredible, but this is our twentieth anniversary: Imaginatorium Shop first opened its virtual doors in April 2002. Many thanks to our customers over the years who have made this possible.

Sadly, this is a low point, not a high one. The appalling invasion of Ukraine by Putin drags on, at horrendous cost in human life and happiness, making it sometimes difficult to concentrate on the everyday business of puzzles.

And Covid has not gone away. Postal services are still varyingly disrupted by Covid-related restrictions and to Europe in particular by effects of the war in Ukraine. There is no consistent pattern: for example, Australia has suspended airmail, leaving surface operating, and New Zealand exactly the opposite.

The yen has fallen against major currencies by something like 20%, which of course makes the cost of our puzzles less in dollar or euro terms, but now we are faced with price increases in shipping costs (Post Office from June), and also miscellaneous costs such as packaging materials. We will keep any increases strictly to the extra amounts for shipping.

Finally a bright spot! The new site at imaginatorium.com is fully operational, and I am at last working on redirecting all old shop pages to the corresponding new ones. With the move, we will also switch to using the new mail address shop@imaginatorium.com. Please make sure you are able to receive emails from this address; recently we have had many problems with our mails apparently caught in errant mail filtering systems.