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Lego Christmas Production Shortage
shadowspar writes, "Recent restructuring and production cuts have left Lego unable to fill orders for the upcoming holiday season. Affected products include Duplo bricks, Lego City sets, and (horror of horrors!) Star Wars and Lego Technik sets." According to the article Lego stands to lose $127 million in holiday sales.
Queue the legos/lego/lego(tm) bricks holy wars.
Wouldn't that be unstructuring? Isn't restructuring supposed to help you make sales instead of loose them ??!
I'm sorry for not being an enthusiast for the 'theme' junk that in my opinion detracts from the lego concept entirely, but I didn't see 'plain lego bricks' on the list. The other stuff is just a marketing department running out of control. As long as big tubs of regular lego bricks will be available, this will just make it easier to not be annoyed by the other crap.
Just my opinion. I grew up building stuff with legos, and didn't need anything but regular bricks to do so with.
You fail it in two ways.
I guess your mother bought you Mega Blocks when you were youger, and not orignal legos.
Can't he outsource to India?
Shame it's no good for Lego. :)
[quote]Lego stands to lose $127 million in holiday sales.[/quote] Star Wars/SpongeBob/et all are too passe'. Where are the trains and cityscapes that graced the magazines and catalogs I used to subscribe to? Just when it got good, they had to stop making that sweet Technic car with four wheel steering and a working gearbox. Its a shame that one day my Technic pieces might be worth their weight in gold.
Capsella kits are way more cool than legos.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Q. Why do you cut production when there are orders to fill?
A. When someone other than a businessperson is running the company (eg beancounter, marketing droid, moneylender, etc)
First oil prices and now shortages verses demand will drive up the price of Legos. You have to wonder if this will turn into another Enron? Are they hording Legos in a warehouse somewhere just waiting to dump them on the market when the prices spike. Reminds me of the oil embargo in the seventies and the more recent Tickle Me Elmo Crisis. Are there ship loads of Legos circling just off the coast? The government needs to step in and end toy profiteering!
Gotta go. I'm meeting some one on a street corner that is willing to sell me one of the new Tickle Me Elmos for $500 cash. We're all victims in this.
So they are trying to steal the multimedia device and Tickle Me Elmo business strategy? This is nothing new.
Note I said "multimedia device", not "game console". You know which two I'm referring to.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
That is all.
I like things that are sweet and not things that are lame. --
Massive layoffs at Legoi d=16811796&BRD=985&PAG=461&dept_id=161556&rfi=6
http://www.journalinquirer.com/site/news.cfm?news
They should have thought about that before swinging the axe to make the share-holders happy.
Of course, how many execs will get canned because of this? Yeah. Zero. Bastards...
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
I can't help but feel a little sad about his. Although Lego has its share of company-wrong-doing-and-greed, Lego bricks are some of the nicest toys around. I really hope Lego can put its show together again.
-- SouNerd.com
When legos have to compete with the XBox 360 you'd better throw some theme action in there to keep those kids interested. As much as we old nerds like to think we keep lego in business it's probably not the case. Not to mention they can chagre more for a theme which will keep the cost of standard bricks from rising. It's all very complicated financial stuff I wouldn't expect you to understand.
I like things that are sweet and not things that are lame. --
...that the Lego CEO gets a $100 million Christmas bonus anyway?
If there's less in supply than there is demand for something, the price (and value?) of that particular something generally goes up. If they have more people wanting legos than they can provide for, couldn't they just sell to the highest bidders and make up some of the loss? Legos could turn into sort of a luxury item temporarily. Not necessarily all bad for them.
Course, I'm not a business man or an expert on economics. I guess at the same time, some people might see doing something like that as greed or as a nose in the air...
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
Yup, it's gonna' be tough. The plant in Enfield, CT. (which I worked at for awhile) deals with packaging the Legos (created overseas) into their boxed forms to be shipped to distributors. However, the place was pretty badly run. While I was working there, there was a little bit of leeway being made in improving the efficiency of the packaging, because of hours you could be standing on a line waiting for the legos you need to package to complete your order. And it wasn't because of the laziness of the workers, the workers themselves would get angry at the fact that they weren't doing anything, eventually sending workers to other operational lines in a hope to scrap some amount of energy out of the workforce otherwise left doing nothing at their current post.
The problem was with the management of the distribution of the packages. The legos come in with all of one style of lego (say, a 2x4 red brick) in large bins. They will be poured into individual bins that go into the line and separated into those little pouches either completely or mostly by machine. There had been under way plenty of industrial engineering trying to make the factory "flow" better. As it was, the pieces would come in and be thrown into one corner of the factory. When they were needed, they would have to be found, and then brought to the line. Leftovers get put back in bins and thrown in another corner.
And there was the problem. Each line was built in the hopes to be able to package any style of box, but because no line really specialized in one style of packaging (save for one or two exceptions, like the Bionic lines specializing in the tubed packages), combined with the fact that the movement of materials to different lines seemed at best ad-hoc (mismanaged), led to a decrease in performance.
Now, the people working the lines were doing their job, and it's too bad that they were eventually laid off. Although the lines were created to allow an increase for modularity in the packaging, the system to bring the pieces to those lines are what failed. By the time the company got to trying to solve the problem, it was too late. The entire way the factory was run, going from a single, central repository of pieces to more of a separated, distributed repository layout (where the pieces are closer to the lines where they would actually be used) would just be too much, in their eyes.
I guess they decided that so long as they were going to have to rebuild the entire factory's layout, they might as well do it where the wages are lower as well.
I'm not a industrial engineer in any right, but that's just what I was able to witness. I probably wouldn't have even written this post if it wasn't for the manager of the shift who would constantly lie blatantly to the employees ("You will not be laid off"). Everyone knows that he was lying, and the good will of the workers was being broken by that mentality.
Not sure if I spouted one piece of good info in this post, but hey, what's Slashdot if not to post uninformed ramblings.
And assume NONE of those lego sets would have sold on sale, and all of them would have sold at full price, they can probably argue that they lost a billion dollars in sales.
Or perhaps the 137 million already reflects Riaa math and they would have actually lost 33 million.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
To hell with the hyperadvertised, branded megafad-of-the-moment shite that the LEGO salesdroids are pushing. The way I'm going about it, there isn't any shortage to worry about... I've been getting my 5 y.o. son interested by doing LEGO kitbash construction projects with him. All sorts of crazy imaginative stuff...kinda like M.C. Escher meets Jane's Fighting Ships (-grin-). When we fall seriously short of some of the more esoteric/uncommon pieces, I go online to check out Bricklink http://www.bricklink.com/. Here, $US 10 or 20 stretches A LOT farther than it does at a retail toy shop.. Combined with the legacy space/town/police LEGO pieces from my own youth, our recent purchases from Bricklink sellers have given us a large mixed assortment to build with. And if you're looking for a particular type of LEGO piece that's hard to search for via Bricklink, first point your browser towards the Peeron online LEGO part catalog http://www.peeron.com/. Interesting stats are available on the pieces you search for, as well as the LEGO catalog item numbers. Harry Potter LEGOS? Not in this house. What's next...LEGO sets themed for Gilmore Girls? 24?? Nip And Tuck?!? (-shiver of revulsion-)
Can't stop the Beta? Time to evacuate to ##altslashdot at webchat.freenode.net - Slashcott in effect.
"Recent restructuring..." foundation for the company to meet the holiday demands...
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
I didn't realize that the demand for legos was still so high that they wouldn't be able to produce enough to cover their orders.
Are people still buying massive amounts of legos?
Either way, I think this lego shortage is going to get massively overshadowed by the PS3 shortage that is bound to happen.
I remember when I lost my intrest in Legos, it was right about the time when they started making the special pieces, the "Cherry On Top" pieces I like to call them.
It took all the fun out of it, it's like they were mocking my own imagination & force feeding me theirs.
I always knew thoose special pieces were bad news, thoose pieces require molds that are just too complicated.
I think Lego needs to get back to producing the toys that sparked imagination, not advertised someone elses.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
This may tip the scales to make me buy some of these.
The most upsetting part is that we can't get nano-legos. I have a complete design for a self-replicating Lego nano-factory. If only I had started sooner, then I would have been able to solve their production limitations forever.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
If Lego become any more expensive than they already are due to this, they could just as well start making these bricks in solid gold. :-p
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Bill O'Reilly released a statement:
it's all part of the secular progressive agenda to get Christianity, God and values out of our children's toys. First it was Target, then it was kmart, now it's Lego. You won't believe this:
Lego has now decided to not meet its targets for the upcoming holiday season . Now throughout American history Lego has failed to give children Christmas toys. There is nothing religious about that, the folks know this. It's just a part of our heritage. But the liberal Hollywood elite and the ACLU are waging a relentless war on traditional values. First it becomes illegal for you to pray in your schools, now they make Legos holiday gifts, next they'll make GI Joe smoke pot and Barbie have an abortion. This is what's happened in Western Europe and Canada, where if you can get religion out, then you can pass secular progressive programs, like euthanasia, promiscuity, and blasphemy. And the children suffer.
But now you can have your say. There is a poll on billoreilly.com: is correct to say that Toys R Us waging a war on American values and aiding the terrorists? It's your vote and you decide. We just report, and there's nothing ridiculous about that.
And that's the memo.
This is the usual tactic. Scare up publicity and increase demand using an artificial supply shortage. Supply down, demand up, outrageous prices normal, CEO gets bonus.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Those responsible should be sacked.
This is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. Good job.
.. that not being able to play around could cost you so much!
Usability Engineer, Master in Human Computer Interaction
In Soviet Russia... ...Uh, wait.
Score one for the hack-and-slash theory of corporate management.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
...and grow up.
How come there are no cheap Lego clones coming out of Asia? Is there a patent that is still active after all these years?
Table-ized A.I.
I was just reminded of the 1993 Christmas season where Commodore couldn't build enough CD32 systems to meet Christmas demand. Commodore had already gone through a bunch of cuts and did not survive them. I'm hoping that Lego has somewhat better management and perhaps some cash on hand to weather the bad times ahead.
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
At http://www.ebay.com/ 21,491 items found for lego.
There is no real shortage thats a planned trick to get more money into the toy sector.
Robert B. Cialdini writes this in his book "The Psychology of Persuasion". One Toy-Product is heavily marketed, so you eventually promise your kids who will be longing for it, they will get it as present for christmas. Then *tata* production shortage bla-bla, and you can't get it, so you have to buy another equally valued toy for your kids. But(!): Promised is still promised! In February the production shortage suddendly vanishes, and you will have to buy your kids the promised toy also. -> Result: You spent twice as much in the toy sector.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Mod parent +20 insightful (since almost no one else so far seems to have noticed this).
That Cialdini book is a gem, by the way. I read it this summer and it was one of the best "soft-sciences"-type books I've ever read, by far.
Highly recommendable.
Just buy the normal Lego sets. Apply some imagination. And build something original.
:)
Mmmm. Nah. That's too far fetched.
Perhaps they'll just build Lego dildos
So making plastics blocks is not your code business?
Karma: Bad. (As in Good?)
The rebel alliance will almost certainly be crushed without re-inforcements
Karma: Bad. (As in Good?)
The spokesperson said, "As part of efforts to restructure the company and focus on our core business, we had to make some cuts ..."
Focus on the core business? The core business is supposed to be making Lego brick sets. Talk about a complete failure at the executive level. That would be like one of their factory workers saying "I'm going to focus on arriving on time and doing my job," and he winds up coming in at noon and goofing off.
Except of course, the factory worker gets fired, while the executives get their annual bonuses regardless.
This is what happens when management tweaks production to make the numbers for 'this quarter' look good. Next quarter goes all to hell.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Lego will not have a shortage in the US:
http://www.playthings.com/article/CA6387905.html
All Hype