Opening a Lego set can really feel equal components overwhelming and thrilling. With quite a few bricks and tiny particulars laced into every factor present in a field, the eagerness to construct brick castles, rocket ships, metropolis skylines, and extra has attracted youngsters in droves for 92 years.
In 2024, few firms have been in a position to replicate Lego’s success. Its toys span generations, from grownup hobbyists reconnecting with their favourite toys to the following era.
Since its humble beginnings in 1932 as not more than a carpenter’s ardour challenge, Lego toys have change into an indispensable a part of childhood. Identify the subject, and there’s probably a set for it, whether or not structure, anime, racing, or jazz music.
Kent Gavin—Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Photographs
Over the a long time, Lego may very effectively have been changed by extra addictive and interesting digital devices. However that wasn’t the case—if something, issues couldn’t be higher for the family-owned Danish firm. It outperformed the toy market with report gross sales in 2023, with a 2% income progress, notching DKK 66 billion ($9.7 billion) towards a 7% decline within the broader business.
What, then, is Lego’s secret sauce to maintain youngsters (and, extra just lately, adults) hooked to its colourful bricks?
Fortune takes an unique look behind the scenes of Lego’s product improvement and the key to preserving the long-lasting model related.
Considered one of Lego’s long-standing themes—house—illustrates what makes its strategy distinctive and helps it stand the check of time. House was one of many firm’s three official classes inside which it developed toys (“castle” and “city” had been the others) courting again to the Seventies. It was meant to symbolize the mysteries of the long run, very similar to castles did for the previous. House’s reputation with youngsters has endured by way of the years because it has captured youngsters’ imaginations as a realm of infinite alternatives.
“Lego-building is a passion in its own right,” Julia Goldin, Lego’s chief product and advertising officer, advised Fortune in an interview.
Listening to youngsters, for youths
Lego realized early on that there was no proxy to understanding what youngsters need with out listening to from them instantly. Goldin stated the corporate made this deliberate determination about 10 years in the past, and it’s helped the corporate change the way it pursued toy-making.
“What makes a Lego set unique is, first and foremost, really understanding the audience,” Goldin stated. “Not just understanding what will be of interest for them, but what are the right dynamics of the experience.”
© 2024 The LEGO Group
The standard of Lego’s bricks is one other issue that units it aside, as units can get handed from one era to the following, based on Frédérique Tutt, international toy business advisor at market analysis agency Circana. Not like senseless video games, mother and father assume their youngsters may achieve one thing good from Lego toys, whether or not that’s engineering talents or utilizing their creativity.
“When parents buy Lego for their child, they think it’s going to help them build their brain,” Tutt advised Fortune. “They [Lego] try to develop products for anyone and everyone.”
Turning an concept into actuality
As a long-time toy maker, Lego has developed a well-oiled machine to assist it continually generate new concepts. The corporate does a “boost week” annually—consider it like a fast brainstorming session usually related to startups that spur new ideas. Designers give you recent concepts or work on present ones, giving them artistic freedom outdoors their day-to-day schedules. There isn’t a guidelines of what must be achieved, though the purpose is to see what could be became a possible Lego set, stated Daniel Meehan, one of many brick firm’s artistic leads.
The subsequent step is to determine how “codable” the fashions are, together with discovering components that inform tales and make them simpler to play with, like Lego astronauts or purple collectible crystals.
Along with milking concepts from the corporate’s designated toy builders, the corporate hears instantly from its viewers.
“We play-test stuff as well with kids extensively,” Meehan stated.
The corporate brings youngsters collectively the world over, from Germany to China, to see what they need extra of. That course of yielded one of many essential components we see in Lego’s space-themed units in the present day, stated Meehan, who’s spearheading the corporate’s current house marketing campaign.
Throughout certainly one of its house “DIY tests,” one of many youngsters was flying round a automobile with wheels, amassing aliens alongside the best way—each of which weren’t a part of the preliminary set’s design.
“We’re very practical, we’re adults … but in the eyes of kids, it was a perfect space flying vehicle. But there was one complaint: he [the kid] said we need more aliens. And we actually did put more aliens in the box as a result of that one kid,” Meehan stated.
© 2024 The LEGO Group
The addition of aliens to Lego units, comparable to in a Lego house station, provides extra layers to what would in any other case be an easy set and likewise marks a typical thread that ties units from different classes collectively. For example, Lego aliens will also be discovered within the house science lab and rover units. The little inexperienced creatures had been intentionally designed to look alike as a cue to Lego builders, Meehan tells Fortune.
Lego’s high quality and complexity can make its merchandise costly—generally pricier than the most recent iPhone. That’s very true of merchandise pulled out of the market, making them uncommon. The novelty of its merchandise has made them a collector’s dream and even the item of $100,000 heists within the U.S. The corporate says it affords units throughout completely different worth factors so nobody feels priced out. Its most simplified merchandise can value single-digit {dollars}, simply as its 7,500-piece Millennium Falcon set may value about $960.
For the love of element
To make sure, Lego’s look after high quality and element isn’t a brand new phenomenon. The corporate’s founder, Ole Kirk Kristiansen, imbibed it strictly to his son, who as soon as tried utilizing two as a substitute of three coats of paint to hasten an order and was reprimanded.
The corporate’s penchant for element applies not simply to its house creations or toy improvement course of but additionally to its enterprise. Goldin, for example, straddles conferences that have a look at the corporate’s current efficiency whereas additionally discussing the pipeline for the following few years.
A lot of the Danish firm’s legacy as a toy maker is linked to the way it makes play accessible throughout age teams, pursuits, and expertise ranges. The theme of house, Meehan explains, could be aimed toward three varieties of audiences: storytellers, who’re principally youngsters with a fascination for the topic; fanatics, who’ve an curiosity in studying concerning the area; and others, who’re usually drawn to all issues house, together with its inventive facet.
“Another strength they have is they appeal to the young children as well as the teenagers or adults with intricate pieces. So, they grow with you,” Tutt stated.
Marc Mueller—Getty Photographs for LEGO Summer season Birthday Bash
The granular strategy additionally applies to how Lego costs merchandise and designs, and markets units for its up-and-coming grownup fanbase, guaranteeing there’s a toy for everybody. However one factor is certain: regardless of the motivations, the corporate tries to not dial down on particulars as a result of that provides Lego toys their character.
Goldin says Lego followers “really notice” the little components it provides, as they “bring a lot of excitement.”
“It’s much more than a toy because it’s a very immersive experience,” she stated.
