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.

Comments

Re:Let's not go too far with the Apple comparisons

[fermion]

I got an apple because it let me create right out of the box. Shape tables are awesome. Plug in a board and I was burning EPROMs. VisiCalc and excel were first in apple.

People but h today but nobody solders thier hacks like I did on my apple. People plug in cable or plugin a chip and they think they have built a computer. Give me a break.

I have python running on my mac, I have gcc. I have LaTex and I don't think nothing beats Texshop.

The problem with legos now is you don't start with a blank sheet of paper. In terms of teaching creativity, getting people to not be afraid of the blank canvass is a critical step. When you start with a Star Wars kit you lose that blank slate, the kid is not learning to be brave, merely to emulate. Yes you can do whatever, but the pressure is not to.

You may ask why not just give them a bunch or wood and glue. It is because we do have to scaffold. There might be some emulation needed between duplo and real legos. But what the company has done is give up on its core mission for profit. Which is fine. The good parents can still buy real lego sets.