About Us

Pucket Enterprises was founded by David Harvey in 2009, with help and encouragement from our friends at Swerve Concepts. Ben Lewis joined when we started trading at Christmas ’09, bringing the team to two.

The funds to get the company going were initially Dave’s redundancy pay from his credit crunched former employment (wind farm analyst), followed by some generous investment from old friends. The first order of 200 games sold out quicker than we’d dared hope, and so we ploughed the money back in for a larger second order. 

There are two ideas that motivate our work. First, we think Pucket is a lot of fun and could become a classic along the lines of Jenga. Second, we believe that business can make the world a little bit better, if done in the right way.
 

Pucket Origins

Pucket is our own version of a traditional French game, known as Table à l'élastique or Passe Trappe. French artisans would make the game from wood and use cat-gut for the elastic, which had to be kept moist during gameplay to stop it turning limp. The game is still played in France by traditional games enthusiasts.

After seeing two jolly old men playing Pucket on the street in a southern French town, we went straight to the DIY shop for materials to build one. After couple of years of playing, refining the game and our technique, we felt it was too much fun to be kept to ourselves, and no-one in Britain seemed to have heard of it.

The final inspiration was reading Jeremy Piercy's book Coffins, Cats, and Fair Trade...Toys, which describes the glut of skilled woodworking craftsmen and women in north India, now that the household goods that they used to craft are often imported and made from plastic. Thanks to an organisation called Aspiration International, we were able to get our Pucket games made by some of these artisans, with the assurance that they are receiving a fair wage for their work. During a trip to India in February 2010 we were able to meet with Aspiration International and visit the craftsmen to see them at work - so watch this space for news and pictures from our trip!