I am an expert on injection moulding. Making one Lego brick is easy. Making 200 million to exactly the same dimensions and colour and with no errors within a completely automated process is extremely difficult. Throw on top of that the requirement that those bricks you make today have to grip to ones made 30 years ago - tight enough not to come apart, not too tight that kids need a wrench - and it becomes a real mind boggling challenge. Just about anyone that knows anything about injection moulding recognise Lego as being up with the very best in the world at what they do.
I know the Lego business pretty well and have been inside the Billund operation. Like many brand leaders, most of the cost of its business is in staying ahead of its competitors. They have a huge number of people involved in design and development - "other brick makers" dance as close to Lego's themes and designs as they dare. Your question should really be, why are Lego lookalikes so expensive?
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I am an expert on injection moulding. Making one Lego brick is easy. Making 200 million to exactly the same dimensions and colour and with no errors within a completely automated process is extremely difficult. Throw on top of that the requirement that those bricks you make today have to grip to ones made 30 years ago - tight enough not to come apart, not too tight that kids need a wrench - and it becomes a real mind boggling challenge. Just about anyone that knows anything about injection moulding recognise Lego as being up with the very best in the world at what they do.
I know the Lego business pretty well and have been inside the Billund operation. Like many brand leaders, most of the cost of its business is in staying ahead of its competitors. They have a huge number of people involved in design and development - "other brick makers" dance as close to Lego's themes and designs as they dare. Your question should really be, why are Lego lookalikes so expensive?