White Mountain Puzzles — Margin breakdown

Researched profile. The figures here are modelled by us from public information, published with the sources they were drawn from. How we research.

Margin breakdown

Read Sep 2026. Figures here are a reading taken then, not a live feed.

Every cent of an average sale across the three channels, down to the three-eighths of it that is left — after Amazon’s two cuts, which on an Amazon order take more than two and a half times what the puzzle costs to make and move.

A 1,000-piece puzzle is a big box for a $20 product, and Amazon prices fulfilment by size and weight rather than by price: about $6.02 to pick, pack and ship each one. Add the 15% referral fee and Amazon takes 46% of every Amazon sale before the puzzle itself is paid for. The lines below dilute those two, because the eighth of revenue that comes through their own store pays Amazon nothing — it pays a card processor about 4.4% instead.

Making the puzzle is the cheap part. Three verified factories in China list a custom-printed 1,000-piece puzzle on Alibaba at $0.50–3.69 a unit, from minimums of 200 or 500 — a first order a new seller can actually place — and the longest-standing has been on Alibaba for 18 years and sold more than 70,000. Their lowest prices average $1.26 a puzzle, and that is the cost to make one below.

COGS — what a 1,000-piece puzzle costs to make

Supplier	Track record	Buyer rating	Sold on Alibaba	MOQ	Unit price
Shenzhen Senfutong Paper Co., Ltd	Verified · 18 yrs	No rating · 200+ store reviews	70,837	500 sets	$1.59–3.69
Dongguan Tongheng Printing Co., Ltd	Verified · 12 yrs	5.0★ from 8 · 300+ store reviews	11,889	200 pieces	$0.50–1.79
Dongguan Senfutong Paper Co., Ltd	Verified · 10 yrs	4.8★ from 12 · 50+ store reviews	1	500 sets	$1.69–2.30
Average lowest price — the cost to make used below					$1.26

All three are Alibaba Verified, FSC-certified and in China, and every listing was a sponsored result on a search filtered to minimums of 1,000 or fewer. Sold counts are Alibaba’s own per-listing counters added up per supplier. The cost to make takes each supplier’s lowest listed price — $1.59, $0.50 and $1.69 — and averages them: the low end, because it is what a production order moves toward. The two Senfutongs share a name and may be related.

Shipping — what it costs to move one puzzle from China

Input	Figure	Where it comes from
Carton	31.0 × 25.7 × 5.4 cm, 0.81 kg	The listing’s own package size (B0DJWLQR6W)
Volume	0.00430 cbm	The carton, in cubic metres
Rate	$497 / cbm	Less-than-container-load, China → US West Coast, door to door
Shipping, per puzzle	$2.14	0.00430 cbm × $497

The rate is the low end of a $993–$8,482 estimate for a 2 cbm shipment; the top of that band prices express services a first order would not buy. It is door to door — customs clearance and delivery included, which is why it runs several times the port-to-port rates freight guides quote — and excludes duty and tariffs. A different product in this catalogue ships in a different box, so it would carry a different figure.

Landed cost — production plus shipping, per puzzle

Line	Per puzzle	From
Production	$1.26	The three Alibaba suppliers’ lowest prices, averaged — COGS table above
Shipping	$2.14	This puzzle’s carton at $497/cbm — shipping table above
Landed cost	$3.40	What one puzzle costs in Amazon’s warehouse, before it sells

This is the figure the cost-of-goods line below uses: $3.40 is 17.418% of the $19.52 average sale across the three channels. It covers making the puzzle and getting it to the warehouse — not the Amazon fees on the sale itself, which are their own lines.

Cost of goods: -17.418% of revenue — $1.26 to make — the three Alibaba suppliers’ lowest prices above, averaged — and $2.14 to ship, priced from this puzzle’s own carton at a read LCL rate. Together $3.40 a puzzle, whichever channel sells it. See landed cost above See COGS breakdown above
Amazon referral fee: -13.17% of revenue — Amazon’s published Toys & Games rate, a flat 15% with a $0.30 minimum. It reads as 13.17% here because it is charged on the Amazon revenue only, and their own store pays no referral at all. Amazon’s referral fees by category
FBA fulfilment: -27.218% of revenue — Size tier: Large Standard. The best seller ships in a 12.2 × 10.1 × 2.1 inch box weighing 1.8 lb — too tall and too heavy for Small Standard. About $6.02 a unit, which is 31% of an Amazon sale and 27.2% of revenue across the three channels: still the largest line here, and the one a bulky, low-priced product cannot negotiate. All of Amazon’s size tiers, explained
Card processing: -0.537% of revenue — Only their own store pays it: the standard online card rate of 2.9% plus $0.30 an order, which on a $19.99 puzzle is about 4.4% — and 0.54% of revenue once the Amazon side, which pays none of it, is counted in. Shipping on that channel is charged to the customer, so it nets to zero and has no line. The published online card rate
Advertising: -2.679% of revenue — Modelled, not observed — and two very different things inside one line. 0.27% of Amazon revenue, where three-quarters of the spend is their own brand name; and 20% of store revenue, where they run a full paid programme on Meta and Google. Neither publishes a bill. See the ad spend behind this line If you want to go in depth, go to the Advertising section
Margin: 38.978% — Before returns and overhead, both set to zero, so this is a ceiling on profit rather than profit. Wholesale is in none of it.

One part of the cost-of-goods line is softer than the rest: the $1.26 prices a puzzle made in China, while White Mountain says every one of its puzzles is made in America — so the line is what the business would cost a new seller to run, not a read of White Mountain’s own books. Softer still: two of the three revenue lines these percentages are percentages OF are estimates rather than readings.

White Mountain Puzzles overview · All case studies