Company Profile - Education Borras

Educa Borras - putting all the pieces in place

A Spanish toy company with roots reaching back to the late 1800s, Educa Borras has made a name for itself in its domestic markets thanks to its high-quality Puzzle, Game, Magic and Arts & Crafts brands. With international expansion now at the heart of the company’s growth strategy, Rachael Simpson-Jones sat down with Jorge Arceo, commercial director, Marketing, and Chris Jones, co-owner of Show Cloud, to find out more about Educa Borras’ rich heritage and the brands that make it a stand-out supplier.

Prior to the year 2000, Educa Borras – which is headquartered in Barcelona, Spain - was two separate entities. Educa had been around since 1967, while Borras goes way back to 1894, meaning the company has a combined 164 years of history behind it. Not many within the industry can claim that amount of heritage, that’s for sure. Of the two, Educa was the first to make a name for itself outside of Spain, having started to move into international markets sometime in the 1980s or 90s. Today, Educa Borras considers its domestic markets to be Spain, Portugal, France and Belgium, and its 6-strong in-house International Sales team sells into more than 60 countries across the globe. While this is sometimes on a DTR basis, most often it’s through trusted distribution partners, some of whom have worked with the company for decades.

The company stands on four core pillars. The first is Puzzles. Educa is one of Europe’s biggest puzzle suppliers, alongside Ravensburger and Clementoni, offering both generic and licensed ranges for all consumer interests and ages. According to the company, Educa puzzles dominate the Spanish marketplace and enjoy a strong presence in France too.

The second pillar is Games. The brand Educa Borras is most known for is the 40-year-old Lynx (AKA: Lince or Vildkatten, depending on the region), which sells 400,000 units a year and is available in a range of formats including ‘My First’ and licences such as Disney, Bluey, Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol (in fact, the company enjoys longstanding relationships with Disney, BBC, Hasbro and Spin Master across its entire portfolio). Chris describes Lynx as a household name in the Iberian market and says its simple yet addictive gameplay is perfect for the entire family. Players require keen eyesight and a fast ‘pounce’ – both traits of its feline namesake – to correctly identify the image they’re looking for and win the round.

“Another of our most successful games is La Liga, an officially licensed product based on the Spanish Premier League,” adds Jorge. “We’ve been producing La Liga for many years and last year sold 25,000 units, plus we released La Liga Junior and La Liga F, a version for fans of the women’s game. Educa Borras also has a strong presence in the Educational Games subcategory with titles such as Conector.”

In Arts & Crafts, the company offers a wide assortment of sets and formats including projectors, light-up tables and the enormously popular Super Candyland createyour-own sweets kits, which sold 35,000 units in Spain in 2024. The unique My Model range, meanwhile, which sits under the Educa brand, invites kids to create their own articulated doll, complete with styled hair and fabric fashions, while Ninco is a range of adrenaline-pumping remote controlled vehicles - planes, cars, drones and helicopters – with unique technological features. Sonic the Hedgehog joins the Ninco line-up this year.

In Outdoor and Role-Play, Chicos offers playhouses, mud kitchens, shopping trolleys, vanities, easels and desks. Unlike its main competitors, Educa Borras’ outdoor plastic products are injection-moulded, not blow- or rotormoulded, which Jorge says makes them more affordable than others on the market while still offering the same sizes and quality.

The company benefits from having two of its own, dedicated factories, one in Barcelona, which specialises in paper, cardboard and wood, the raw materials for which are sourced from Germany, and a second in Alicante; this one specialises in the injection-moulded plastic seen in so many Educa Borras ranges. It also acts as the primary component supplier for the company’s games and toys with plastic parts. Until 2011, injection-moulding was being carried out by third-party providers, but the acquisition of the factory allowed the company to ship all its tooling from vendors across Spain to its new hub in Alicante and start producing plastic products under its own steam.

Jorge Arceo

Having its own factories and tooling also means Educa Borras is able to react both swiftly and flexibly to requests for custom orders (DTR lines, one-off licences and exclusive puzzles, for example) and re-orders with no existing inventory. Product can be ready to ship in as little as 21-40 days, depending on the order.

“Educa Borras is also continuing to develop truly innovative ranges, such as the revolutionary 3D Puzzle Cubes that offer six puzzling challenges in one,” adds Chris. “At Spielwarenmesse 2025, we showcased Floral Art, a range of flower display crafting kits combining paper and plastic elements to create a finished product that’s visually striking and very different to other offerings on the market.”

Educa Borras’ factories also play host to its substantial showrooms, both of which welcome plenty of buyers through the doors each year. Reflecting the size of the company’s portfolio, the showrooms are certainly spacious; the Barcelona showroom is roughly the size of a tennis court, while the one in Alicante is even bigger. Educa Borras is also bookending the year with appearances at international toy trade events. Having already showcased in Nuremberg at the end of January, it’s now looking forward to having a presence at The Toy Association’s LA Fall Preview in September, when it returns to the US for the second consecutive year. To book a meeting, reach out to export area manager Isabel Corretjer on i.corretjer@ educaborras.com or international@educaborras.com

“Before we started showcasing in LA, we’ve been unable to sit down with people from the international toy community and really explain who we are and what we do,” says Jorge, when asked why the trip is important to Educa Borras’ expansion plans. “Over here in Spain, we couldn’t be more well-known. Ask any consumer if they know us, and I guarantee every single person you speak to will say yes and tell you positive things about us. We’re making huge investments into the business all the time; running two large factories is like having to feed two very large moneyeating monsters every day. Machinery, raw materials, components – they cost a lot, but the result is unique, high quality product kids and parents have loved for generations.”

Educa Borras’ rich heritage is one of the many elements that sets the company apart in the marketplace. Magia Borras is a great example of this consumer love and loyalty in action. It’s a 90-yearold, multi-generational brand of magic sets Jorge’s own father and grandfather - as well as Jorge himself - played with as a child, and dominates the Spanish magic category, against some very well-known competitors, owing to the place both it – and Educa Borras - hold in the hearts of consumers. (Isabel, meanwhile, used to play with her dad’s Magia Borras set as a child, a testament to the quality and longevity of Educa Borras’ ranges.)

Puzzle fans appreciate the lengths Educa Borras goes to in order to keep them entertained, being both a deeply traditional company as well as a fun one. While most adult puzzles come in at 1,000- or 2,000-pieces, the company’s go up to a whopping 42,000-pieces. (Also available are 6,000-piece, 18,000-piece, 24,000-piece and 33,600-piece puzzles, in case you want to work your way up to the pièce de résistance.) Around the World is 7.5m long when finished and 1.5m high. Chris has shown me pictures of Argentinian puzzle enthusiast Maximiliano Rubio with his finished creation, which is so big he had to complete it on the floor of what looks like a school sports hall over a period of three or four months. When he was done, Maximiliano contacted Educa Borras to commend the puzzle’s quality and thank them for producing it.

Much like some of its puzzles, Educa Borras wants to be big. As it moves through 2025, the company has its sights set on further expansion outside of its domestic markets and representation of its key brands in more countries. Educa Borras doesn’t currently have a UK distributor, so interested parties are urged to get in touch now if they think this is something they can assist with.

As our interview draws to a close, I ask Jorge and Chris what major takeaways they’d most like the readers of Toy World to know about Educa Borras. They highlight the company’s innovative streak, its manufacturing and tooling capabilities, its strength in licensing as well as generic product, its beloved household brands. But more than that, they want readers to know that the company is poised for expansion – and that retailers stand to gain a lot from stocking its products.

“We want to tell the world who we are and what we do, and more importantly, what we can do for you,” Jorge finishes. “Our heritage brands, many of which have been around for 40 years or longer, offer an unrivalled opportunity to buy into a company that already enjoys the devotion of thousands of consumers across the globe, while our focus on innovation, quality and speed to market is second to none. We’re only going to expand from herein out, and you can be a part of that journey.”