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How Lego Clicked: The Super Brand That Reinvented Itself (theguardian.com)
managerialslime shared an article about how Lego executed "the greatest turnaround in corporate history." The Guardian reports:
By 2003 Lego was in big trouble. Sales were down 30% year-on-year and it was $800m in debt. An internal report revealed it hadn't added anything of value to its portfolio for a decade... In 2015, the still privately owned, family controlled Lego Group overtook Ferrari to become the world's most powerful brand. It announced profits of £660m, making it the number one toy company in Europe and Asia, and number three in North America, where sales topped $1bn for the first time. From 2008 to 2010 its profits quadrupled, outstripping Apple's. Indeed, it has been called the Apple of toys: a profit-generating, design-driven miracle built around premium, intuitive, covetable hardware that fans can't get enough of. Last year Lego sold 75bn bricks. Lego people -- "Minifigures" -- the 4cm-tall yellow characters with dotty eyes, permanent grins, hooks for hands and pegs for legs -- outnumber humans. The British Toy Retailers Association voted Lego the toy of the century.
It's a good read. The article describes how CEO Vig Knudstorp curtailed the company's over-expansion -- at one point, Lego had "built its own video games company from scratch, the largest installation of Silicon Graphics supercomputers in northern Europe, despite having no experience in the field." And he also encouraged the company to interact with its fans on the internet -- for example, the crowdsourcing of Ninjago content -- while the company enjoyed new popularity with Mindstorms kits for building programmable Lego robots.
It's a good read. The article describes how CEO Vig Knudstorp curtailed the company's over-expansion -- at one point, Lego had "built its own video games company from scratch, the largest installation of Silicon Graphics supercomputers in northern Europe, despite having no experience in the field." And he also encouraged the company to interact with its fans on the internet -- for example, the crowdsourcing of Ninjago content -- while the company enjoyed new popularity with Mindstorms kits for building programmable Lego robots.
The big difference post-'03 is they started 'Disneyfying' themselves, theme parks everywhere...
There are only 6 legoland theme parks.. and 4 of them were built before '03. The remaining two opened in '11 and just '17.
There, let me save you the trouble of reading a boring article by sharing this cool video instead, The Lego's Story : https://youtu.be/NdDU_BBJW9Y
Elok
LEGO has had weapons in sets since the first Castle sets in 1978 (swords, axes and lances as well as shields and armor) and guns (muskets and pistols) since the first Pirates sets in 1989.
As for "internally developed IPs", LEGO was licensing car and truck brands as well as oil companies and others as far back as 1955. And regarding the claims that they dont make original ideas anymore and only make licensed stuff, themes like City, Creator, Elves, Friends, Nexo Knights, NinjaGo and Technic will prove you wrong on that. (and that's just the themes that have had sets released in 2017).
In terms of manufacturing, LEGO does not have any factories in Malaysia (they have a theme park there but no factories). They also don't outsource the manufacture of most of their parts or packaging processes (there are some parts that are made by 3rd parties for various reasons but most of them are made directly by LEGO in LEGO-owned factories in Denmark, China, Mexico, the Czech Republic and elsewhere) .
They also still produce hundreds of general purpose parts like bricks and roof pieces and so on alongside many more special purpose parts that can be used for other things other than the purpose they were designed for. The set I am currently building uses a part originally created as a hammer for Thor in the Super Heroes sets but uses it as an architectural detail rather than a hammer.