Rdxfbgrtj

Ravensburger AG

Type	Aktiengesellschaft
Industry	Puzzle, toy
Founded	1883
Headquarters	Ravensburg, Germany
Area served	Worldwide
Owner	Maier family, private company
Website	www.ravensburger.de/

Ravensburger headquarters

Ravensburger AG is a German game and toy company and market leader in the European jigsaw puzzle market.

History

The company was founded by Otto Robert Maier with seat in Ravensburg, a town in Upper Swabia in southern Germany. He began publishing in 1883 with his first author contract. He started publishing instruction folders for craftsmen and architects, which soon acquired him a solid financial basis. His first board game appeared in 1884, named "Journey around the world".

At the turn of the 20th century, his product line broadened to include picture books, books, children’s activity books, Art Instruction manuals, non-fiction books, and reference books as well as children’s games, Happy Families and activity kits. In 1900, the Ravensburger blue triangle trademark was registered with the Imperial Patent office. As of 1912, many board and activity games had an export version that was distributed to Western Europe, the countries of the Danube Monarchy as well as Russia.

Before the First World War, Ravensburger had around 800 products. The publishing house was damaged during the Second World War and continued to produce games in the years of the reconstruction. The company focused on children's games and books and specialized books for art, architecture and hobbies, and from 1962 grew strongly. The company started to produce jigsaw puzzle games in 1964, and in the same year opened subsidiaries in Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In 1977 the company split into a book publishing arm and a game publishing arm.

Today there are approximately 1,800 available books and 850 games as well as puzzles, hobby products and CD-ROM titles at Ravensburger and its subsidiaries, which include Alea for "hobby and ardent game players" and FX Schmid for games and children's books. Ravensburger products are exported to more than fifty countries. Ravensburger also expanded to video games in the late 1990s by forming Ravensburger Interactive, which they sold in May 2002 to JoWooD Productions.

In September 2010, Ravensburger broke Educa's record for the world's largest jigsaw puzzle of 24,000 pieces.^[1] Ravensburger's new puzzle design by late pop artist Keith Haring titled, "Keith Haring: Double Retrospect" breaks the Guinness Book of World Records measuring 17' × 6' (5.18 m x 1.82 m) built from 32,256 pieces and comes with its own dolly cart for toting. Currently the largest commercial puzzles are Educa's "Around The World" with 42000 pieces^[2][3] and Ravensburger's "Memorable Disney Moments" with 40,320 pieces.^[4]

Swedish toy train company BRIO was acquired by the Ravensburger Group on 8 January 2015.^[5] In 2017, Ravensburger acquired American game company Wonder Forge.^[6]

Notable games

Games sold under the "Ravensburger" imprint:

• Labyrinth (board game)


• Dingbats


• Emoji


• Enchanted Forest


• Havannah


• Java


• Journey through Europe


• Malefiz


• Make 'n' Break


• Mexica


• Nobody is perfect


• Quest


• Reversi


• Scotland Yard


• Star Wars


• Take It Easy


• Tikal


• Top Secret Spies


• Rivers, Roads and Rails


• What Do You Hear?


• Tactil

Games sold under the "Alea" imprint:

• Puerto Rico


• Ra


• San Juan


• Princes of Florence


• Chinatown


• Castles of Burgundy


• Broom Service

Games sold under the "FX Schmid" imprint:

• Auf Achse


• Torres

Games sold under the "Ravensburger Digital" label:

• 
  Memory Editions: Classic, Kids, My Photos - App Store
  

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ravensburger.

• Official website


• 
  Ravensburger, Alea and FX Schmid at BoardGameGeek