ROCKFORD, Mich. — With so many at home during this ongoing pandemic, cornhole has been something many have turned to for fun.
"Most of the calls are, 'we're bored, we're stuck at home, and we're looking for something to do,'" said Cornhole America owner, Jason Duflo.
Duflo began building cornhole boards out of his garage in 2006. Over 14 years later, it's become much more than a hobby, it's a successful business.
"Our sales are up 800-percent from last year [at this time]," Duflo said.
The orders haven't stopped since the pandemic began and Duflo adds that they've gotten so many, that they're running about three weeks behind schedule. However, they're greatful for the work.
"We haven't felt the [negative] effects at all," Duflo added, "we feel fortunate. It's a family owned business, it started as a home based business and was very easy to keep going through this."
In fact, business is so good for Cornhole America that they are now looking to add a couple of employees and are looking to move into a larger corporate space that can fill their needs.
"We were looking at a building in Cedar Springs, we were going to share the building with a company owned in Germany, but they backed out. They said, 'we're worried about the current times,' and I said, 'don't worry about us, we're in good shape right now.'"
The business is expecting to have that new corporate location by next week as they continue to fulfill requests from all over the country.
"We have corporate logos, people send us pictures of their families, trucks, deer hunting, we're American themed, so we do a lot of red, white, and blue," he added.
Duflo and his family do a lot of fundraising through cornhole tournaments across West Michigan. While they can't do those right now, they're happy to keep people smiling through their business.
"Being able to make people happy and giving people something to do at home is great, there's definitely a silver lining for us."
