We were lucky to catch up with Valeria Bianco recently and have shared our conversation below.

Valeria, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I have been collecting photographs of various patterns and textures for almost a decade. I design physical objects for a living and I even created a couple of textile designs in the past. With the past three years this obsession with textures just grew more intense. While there’s certainly no shortage of photographers capturing New York City, during the height of the lockdown capturing the beauty of my town became a sort of mission for me, in a time when NYC seemed deprived of its vibrancy. I always find it comforting to capture lines & patterns either in nature or man-made objects, a repetitiveness that soothes the soul when things seem to spiral out of control. And in 2020 things did just that: got crazy and then some. Like other creative people during the pandemic, I experienced professional instability coupled with a desire to do something that inspired positivity. I have always been a hiker; whether in parks or city streets, when given the time I choose walking toward biking and public transport. Walking during the pandemic became more than essential; I increased my normal daily of two miles to five, rain or shine. As an industrial designer I spend most of my day either drawing by hand or on a desktop computer and I have long been a believer of scattered versus hyper-focused brain focus. As the world became more anxious nothing soothed my soul as much as walking, so through photography and walking I began this collection of themed collages. It started with bridges, on a whim I decided: what if I walk out of Manhattan, every week I would choose different paths out of this island and walking decidedly less touristy bridges, I captured their architecture details as much as their views from their spans. From bridges it extended to the different typologies of the surrounding neighborhoods, the architecture styles, the farmer markets and the local bakeries. As weeks went by my collection of photographs grew and one day along with the barrage of gloomy news of the virus I read about a hobby that was gaining back popularity: jigsaw puzzles. They were flying off the shelves, manufacturers struggling to keep up with the sudden uptick of sales. And so the idea of The Jigsaw Nomad was born: I would make puzzles out of my collection of collages, as it turns out dissectologists enjoy patterns as much as I do. Closed friends agreed and were excited by my idea, however as much as I could rely on my design skills to create the artwork and the packaging design, creating a profitable business was another thing all together, I began asking close friends for advice and a fellow entrepreneur suggested a mentorship program called SCORE where I would be paired with a business mentor that will help me guide me through transform an idea into a company. I had some capital set aside to get me through the first year and initial investment, I created the business plan, I ran the numbers to see the investment needed to produce three designs. Once I found a mentor I began monthly meetings on Zoom with them. To secure some additional funding and to launch my idea to the world, I launched a Kickstarter Campaign and in the Fall of 2021 I achieved my goal The budget was tight, I spent days finding the right name for the company that captured what it meant for me. The Jigsaw Nomad did just that, walks & puzzles by way of textures.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a product designer, certainly a term that gets his fair share of overuse especially since the advent of so many digital products. However I work with physical objects (from furniture pieces to perfume bottles) I give shape to things and often create how they are packaged. After several years of working full time for boutique agencies and global corporations, I consult independently from my home & office in Harlem, NYC. So much of my job has been to observe my surroundings and how people interact with the objects inside their home and the enjoyment (or lack of) when they use them. A perhaps quirky aspect of myself is that I don’t like to own things, some people would call me a minimalist and while it’s undeniable that years living in small apartments in NYC had an influence on my collecting habits, it goes further than that, collecting objects and clothes drags me down and contribute to baggagethat I happily shed. Paradoxically I obsess about details in the world around me, I appreciate beauty in my surroundings and the carefully intricate textures of plants and man-made objects alike, while I limit myself to capture their images I make an exception to my non-collecting rule, I do have weakness for carefully designed jigsaw puzzles, either photographic or illustration based but especially the collage kind and that’s another reason that lead me to create The Jigsaw Nomad. I am the first to admit that jigsaw puzzles are not for everyone, in my first year of business I lost count of the people that told me “I am not a puzzle person” but it is usually followed by a “but, my mother/nephew/drycleaner is”. 2020 saw a resurgence of the relaxing habit, one that does not see signs of fading with a healthy business of Instagram influencers solely dedicated to puzzling. My designs contain the collections of patterns that I adore and find in the streets in NYC, especially when in places far from the beaten path. The Jigsaw Nomad allows me to create consistently engaging puzzling sessions while I get to add my own experience of packaging designer creating the boxes that house them and you can proudly display on a shelf. Puzzles are not too dissimilar to books, where it is actually OK to judge them by their covers!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

This easily functions as a short absurdist story! Exactly a year ago in January I formally formed The Jigsaw Nomad, created my business entity, launched the shop site, opened a bank account, all good to go right? Not so fast. In what will become an unsolved mystery of the founding of The Jigsaw Nomad, there was a small typo in the application with the IRS to apply for the EIN number. It was a typo, not made by me and so small that it was almost invisible, I guess it’s one of those cases where the mind corrects what it sees automatically. The problem started when the normally diligent bank employee did not catch it. The bank account was opened regularly only to be flagged two days later as not matching my business’ formation document. “No problem” the bank assured “if you bring the right document with the proper name matching the EIN within thirty days, it is business as usual”. Famous last words. A few days later my website admin let me know that they won’t deposit the earnings from sales to that same bank account, as it does not match the info provided. Nothing can be done from their part, company policies forbid them to assign them to a different account, fraud alert! Now to the reader out-there that has tried to reach the IRS office the past two years: I feel for you, there should be a Hallmark sympathy card made for us. In normal-non-pandemic-times it takes the IRS sixty days to change a name on a form, “fun fact” that branch only works in an in-person office so for six months of 2020 they accumulated cases to last a solid year. I learned this not right away of course but on the fifth call to the help number provided, where I appreciated the blunt honesty of that fifth IRS employee, where the previous four just repeated the standard answer “it’s in progress we expect the matter resolved in sixty days”, mind you I got those responses after waiting on-line for a solid hour each. By this time thirty days had passed and my initial account was closed. The shop website was still up and working just not releasing my funds. I was at least assured there would not be penalties; still I was so angry, deflated and powerless from this absurd problem because of a freaking typo! At some point I was suggested to add a name to my Company, the one matching the typo, repay the filing fee, all of course before knowing if the new temporary name would be accepted. Important information here: to apply for a new number is a firm NO from the IRS. Flash forward we are now in April, I still worked on developing the brand, made more connections on Social Media but on the inside I was so discouraged, I seriously considered putting the whole thing on hold, I had sold a few puzzles through the website, which worked just fine for the customers but continued not to release the funds to me. I wanted to reach out to new partners and especially introduce my new brand to retailers, but all that was put on hold. How did I keep my sanity? I do have an advantage here: I grew up in Italy: an absolutely wonderful place to grow up in, but as far as bureaucracy & tax system, an infuriating place, so my soul is tempered to byzantine systems. Well ‘the Office of Taxation of the United States in a pandemic’ has given Italy’s post office of the seventies a run for its money! The first week of May came and I received a letter in the mail containing a document with the glorious name of The Jigsaw Nomad matching my EIN, I remember jumping up & down from joy and relief. Another call the week before proclaimed that while “in progress” it could still take six months for my issue to be resolved. So that letter sure felt like divine intervention, the very next morning the bank account was re-opened and by the end of the week the funds deposited in my account.
Looking back, this ordeal lasted a whole of four months and in the grand scheme of things, it could have been a lot worse. The reality is: when starting your own company you can plan for so many items to keep an eye out, and while keeping calm and doggedly checking all your items on your list, the chance for something so mind-boggling simple, throwing you in such a loop is always there. I wish I gained some hard pearls of wisdom to share here, what I have instead is simple: Don’t give up, research every single possible solution: the simple, the complex and the wacky but then step away from them. The first two months of this issue I could not focus on anything else, I suppose it is a normal reaction but I let this problem interfere with doing the other work I needed to get done. I am sure it is not the last unpredictable obstacle that will be thrown my way but I’d like to believe I am better equipped to confront it now and yes, typos sure are dangerous!

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

When starting a new business especially one as a solo-entrepreneur there can be so many things to worry about that it is daunting to correctly prioritize tasks and, at times even more daunting to stay focused when seemingly you are the only one affected by the progress (or lack of) made. Aware of this problem I turned into a specific type of self-help book, the productivity one. There are plenty out there, I found benefits from “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and “Hyper Focus: how to work less to achieve more” by Chris Bailey, then and this is not at all a business book but one that helped me to generally feel better about starting something new in a time of uncertainty, I read “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We Are Wrong About the World” by Anna Rosling Rönnlung, Hans & Ola Rosling, I recommend this one to any other human living in a first world country.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thejigsawnomad.com
• Instagram: @TheJigsawNomad
• Facebook: @TheJigsawNomad
• Twitter: @TheJigsawNomad

Image Credits
All Images are credited to The Jigsaw Nomad, except for one credited to Delphine Lee as stated in the file name.