Today, LEGO is clearly associated with the famous bricks, from which you can assemble anything - from an electronic robot to an entire city. But LEGO's path to the top of the toy world wasn't easy. At different periods of its history, the company made wooden ducks, prefabricated tractor models and even... garden ladders. Today we will tell this amazing story - the history of LEGO.
The first LEGO set appeared with the author of this material, scary to say, in 1989 - brought to the USSR from mysterious foreign countries in a plastic bag. Therefore, the author has been in love with LEGO for almost thirty years and is undoubtedly biased. Moreover, he wants to understand the origins of the subject of his passion.
It all started before the war in the small Danish town of Billund, where LEGO’s head office is still located today. In 1916, 25-year-old carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen decided to start his own business and bought a small workshop where he made decorations for facades and furniture. His business was quite successful for many years, survived a serious fire in 1924, but did not survive the Great Depression. By the early thirties there were no clients, and the Christiansen family was sitting on beans. It became clear that you couldn’t live with furniture production - and you had to switch to more modest projects.
The legendary duck, which was in the company’s assortment for about 20 years. The picture shows an example from the mid-1950s.
So in 1932 a workshop was founded, which over time became one of the most famous toy manufacturers in the world.
So, Christiansen's workshop began making toys - wooden pigs, ducks, cars, houses. Inexpensive and simple, they sold well, especially since the expenses were more than modest: at first, only his three eldest sons worked with Ole Kirk - Johannes, Karl Georg and Gottfried Ole, later the workshop grew to 7 employees. The workshop also made simple equipment - garden ladders, ironing boards.
Lego Group
LEGO products from 1932 in the company museum. In the background is a promotional shot of LEGO: the entire workshop and products.
In 1934, the workshop received its modern name. Christiansen hesitated between several options, in particular, he wanted to name the company LEGIO (from legion of toys - “legion of toys”), but in the end he called LEGO from the Danish leg godt, “play well.” It’s funny, but another translation is often found - from Latin the word lego can be translated as “putting it together.” Company representatives discovered this similarity much later and immediately took advantage of the amazing coincidence.
Company logos from different years. The very first (1934) is at the top left. Modern (since 1998) - bottom middle.
The company's motto was "Only the best is good enough." And indeed, LEGO wooden ducks were different highest quality. In 1935, the first prefabricated wooden toys appeared in the assortment.
Lego Group
The company's motto, "Only the best is good enough," hung above the workshop door in the 1930s. Gottfried personally carved it.
Gottfried did not intend to continue his father's carpentry business and planned to study in Germany, but these plans were interrupted by the war. The son remained in the workshop - and the toy business became his life; it was he, the third of five children, who continued his father’s work. During the war, the workshop did not stop working, although in 1942 it burned to the ground during an air raid and was rebuilt by workers.
Wooden LEGO truck, 1935.
Neither the occupation nor the post-war crisis prevented LEGO from developing. Toys were needed at all times, the company grew, and in 1946 Ole Kirk made an epoch-making decision. He bought a plastic injection molding machine, in other words, an injection molding machine capable of molding plastic parts under pressure. It cost 30 thousand Danish kroner - with the company’s annual turnover of only 450 thousand. But as it turned out, this was the most correct step of all possible.
Workshop wooden toys late 1940s.
In the 1940s and 1950s, LEGO's range was huge, but generally no different from other toy companies that had wooden and plastic production. Plastic balls for children, board game according to the rules traffic, wooden animal figurines, all kinds of backyard games, model cars - everything under the sun!
Lego Group
The very first LEGO workshop with an injection molding machine.
Moreover, the best-selling toy of the late forties was... a pistol, first wooden, then plastic. After all, children love to play war games, and if a toy company wanted to be competitive, it had to make war toys. But let's give it its due - this was the first and last such toy of the brand; Christiansen was a pacifist to the core and categorically did not want to make toy weapons. By 1949 the company had 50 employees.
Pages from the 1950 LEGO catalog. These catalogs became the forerunners of the famous modern yearbooks.
And then something interesting happened. The idea of building various structures from bricks that could be pressed into each other was not new. In the early 1930s, such toys were made, for example, by the British company Minibrix, although the protrusions of its cubes were located not on top, but on the bottom of the bricks. LEGO had similar ideas, but it was not possible to fully implement them in wood.
And in 1939, Briton Hilary Fisher Page, founder of Kiddicraft, patented what he called “self-clamping building blocks” - his invention resembled modern LEGO 4x4 bricks. He later received several more patents for cubes of various sizes and types. Kiddicraft was one of the first plastic toy manufacturers in Europe and its products were supplied as samples with injection molding machines. Such a sample was also included with the machine purchased by Christiansen (it was actually the first injection molding machine in Denmark).
Advertising of the prototype of LEGO, toys of the Kiddikraft company. The cubes, invented by Hilary Page, did not yet have an internal structure; they were “self-clamping at the edges, and therefore large models could not be turned over. Much later, in 1981, the LEGO company bought the patent for such a cube from Page’s successors.
If for Page the blocks were one of his many toys, then the Dane sensed real potential in them. He slightly improved the block, changing the shape of the slot in the bottom for better attachment, and in 1949 he introduced his own version called “automatic snapping blocks” (along with other plastic toys, such as a bear on an airplane).
The first LEGO bricks, 1949.
The first LEGO bricks came in several varieties: 2x2, 2x4 bricks, 2x2, 2x3 and 2x4 windows with bases, and 2x4 doors. Their combinations made it possible to build almost any house. The first four sets of bricks were called 700/1, 700/2, 700/3 and 700/4 (even then the company laid the foundation for its famous set numbering). The 700/x series was produced until the mid-1960s.
Set 700/3, 1950.
And in 1958, Gottfried Kirk Christiansen received what is probably his most famous patent - for a system for clamping a protrusion in a brick. Turn over any LEGO brick and you will see this system. Page's basic bricks did not have such a system, and therefore large Kiddicraft structures could not, for example, be turned over.
The coolest thing about this system to this day is that all cubes made from 1958 to the present day are compatible! Yes, you can take parts from a 1960s kit and easily use them in a modern kit. What's more, even though the smaller LEGO DUPLO series is 8 times larger than its older counterparts, it's compatible with them too! This versatility is what made LEGO what it is today. And we will move on.
Neither Page nor Kirk Ole Christiansen saw the triumphant march of their bricks across the planet - both died in 1957 and 1958, respectively. Gottfried Kirk took over the leadership of LEGO. By then, the bricks had already taken on their modern look - even with the word LEGO imprinted on each prong.
From the 1953 catalogue.
In 1956, the export of products began - the first country for supplies was Sweden, the second was Germany, then Switzerland, France, and Great Britain were added. Of course, it was not only or even so much construction kits that were exported. The main exports so far have been ordinary plastic toys. And in 1960, either a misfortune or a sign happened. The workshop where they worked with wood burned down. After thinking, Gottfried Kirk decided not to resume wood production and focus on the future. And the future was clearly plastic.
Packaging plant, 1962
By the beginning of the 1960s, the company was already large, even very large. Products were also supplied to the USA, Gottfried acquired a personal plane, and more and more new elements appeared in the line of toys, so familiar to us today. For example, a mount for the wheels of LEGO cars was patented in 1961, in 1964 the sets were divided into basic ones (say, houses and cars) and additional ones (just bricks that could be used to complete the basic sets) - this structure is still preserved .
Fun fact: Billund did not have an airport, and the LEGO company built it with its own funds, because it also had a cargo plane for direct deliveries of toys and needed the ability to take off directly from the factory gates. By 1966, the company was producing kits that included 57 buildings and 25 vehicles, and in total 706 million parts were produced per year.
In 1967, gear trains and small electric motors were introduced that were integrated into sets - essentially the first step towards LEGO Technic. In 1968, the famous Legoland in Billund opened - 625,000 people visited it in the first year! And in 1969, the LEGO DUPLO series went on sale - on an enlarged scale for the little ones. The name of this series comes from the Latin duplus, “double”, since its cubes are twice as large in each of the parameters - height, length and width.
In the world of LEGO there were trains and cars, houses and roads, airports and train stations - only one thing was missing. Human. Of course, the kits offered to assemble humanoid figures from existing parts, but this was not quite the same. In 1975, the first prototypes of modern minifigures appeared in the sets - they did not have movable arms, the legs also did not move and were a single whole, and faces were not drawn on the heads. But the figures had some choice of headdresses.
Early version of minifigures (1975), still without hands and faces.
It was not Gottfried who said the new word, but his son, the representative of the third generation of the family, Kjeld Kirk Christiansen. In 1978, he developed a movable figure of a man that could be integrated into existing LEGO cities - and proposed it to the board of directors. It was already a modern character with a smiley face and clamped hands. The idea was accepted with enthusiasm, and the LEGO world became inhabitable. From that moment on, all sets of the LEGO City, LEGO Castle and LEGO Space series were necessarily equipped with little men. Over the years, more than four billion figures have been produced.
Classic minifigures designed by Kjeld. They had the same smiley faces, but in general they were consistent with modern ones.
It is worth noting that until 1989, all Lego people had the same faces, just smiley eyes and smiles. The first distinctive faces (specifically unshaven ones) appeared in the LEGO Pirates line. By the way, pirates also acquired other interchangeable body elements, in particular, hooks instead of arms and wooden legs.
Meanwhile, the “adult” LEGO line with motors, gears, cardans and drives was also developing. In 1982, it received its modern name - LEGO Technic. Subsequently, electrical components, in particular sirens and lights, also received sets of lower series. And in 1999, the company entered into the first-ever agreements with third-party companies to produce licensed figures and series. In LEGO DUPLO, this series became the adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and in LEGO Space, the Star Wars series.
Every second, seven LEGO sets are sold in the world, Danish sets have even been in space - in 2011, astronauts captured 13 sets on the ISS. The story continues, more and more new series, sets, characters appear.
In subsequent articles, we will tell you a lot more interesting things about LEGO, including the rarest models in history and amazing full-size brick models. Don't change the channel, read Popular Mechanics and play LEGO!
Today we will go to the city of Billund in Denmark to visit the factory that produces the world famous LEGO designer. Let's look at the production process from the inside, and follow the progress of processing and packaging of the famous designer.
These bricks lie in front of the Lego Group headquarters in Billund.
The company was born in 1932. Its founder was the Dane Ole Kirk Christiansen, who was the foreman of a team of carpenters and joiners. In 1947, the company expanded production and began producing plastic toys. Since its introduction in 1949, LEGO elements in all their versions have remained compatible with each other. So, for example, elements created in 1958 are still paired with elements released in 2010, despite radical changes in the design and shape of the elements over the years.
All parts of LEGO construction sets are manufactured to a specific standard with a high degree of precision, which allows them to be connected without significant effort. In addition, after connection, the parts must be securely attached to each other. To ensure these conditions, the design elements are manufactured with an accuracy of 2 micrometers.
Since 1991, with the beginning of the era of computer video games, the Lego company suffered losses for 11 years, correcting this situation only with the release of new robotic sets.
The process of creating Lego bricks is actually not that complicated. The production of designer elements consists of pouring liquid plastic into a mold and placing it under a press. The form cools, opens, and you have a ready-made Lego brick in your hands. Then comes the second, more complex part of the process - processing, adding artistic details such as suits, ties, etc.
This is the reception area at Lego headquarters. Pay attention to the ceiling and chairs - they seem to be made from construction bricks.
All Lego sets are made from the same plastic based on acrylonitrile, butadiene and styrene. It comes to Lego directly from suppliers and is then stored in giant silos. It is usually either red or clear, and piece-specific dye is added to the molding machines. This is a container filled with liquid plastic based on acrylonitrile, butadiene and styrene, with the addition of individual dyes.
This is a molding machine. First, very hot plastic is poured into the molds on the right side. It then spreads through small channels and enters the pressing area through very small incisions. When cold water is poured into the molding machine, it causes the plastic to cool and the mold opens, allowing the bricks to fall freely onto the conveyor belt.
Currently, there are about 7 thousand active forms that are used in the production of Lego. However, in general, the company has more than 9 thousand of these forms at its disposal, many of which are waiting in the wings on the shelves, like this one, for example. The average form costs about 72 thousand dollars, the cost of the most complex and expensive is 360 thousand dollars.
Here you can see how plastic is poured into the pressing area of the molding machine.
In this photo we see two ellipsoidal parts that have just been in the mold. After a few seconds they will fall onto the conveyor belt.
This photo shows a mold for making ellipsoidal parts from the top photo.
The produced bricks and other elements can later be used in different ways. These blue pieces can be used both as heads for tiny figures and as decoration for other elements.
Thousands of purple Lego bricks that were under pressure just a few minutes ago.
This is one of twelve molding modules located in Billund. Each module, or dedicated production room, houses up to 64 working molding machines, divided into two blocks of 32 machines each.
A robotic arm removing waste from the melting process and making parts from a molding machine. The plastic will be sent back for melting and will be used very soon.
Basket for production waste.
Production at the Lego factory is virtually waste-free, as plastic is put to good use. However, some of the waste generated during the production process is still sent to the trash bin.
Pipes through which plastic granules enter molding machines. The noise this creates is reminiscent of the noise that would be caused by billions of grains of rice moving through plastic pipes.
The molding machines are used for four weeks before being taken out and thoroughly cleaned. In the photo we see a company employee performing this procedure.
At this stage of production of the figures, arms, legs, heads and other additional parts and elements will be attached to them.
The robot attaches hands to the figurine.
Here you can see how the machine stamps faces and shirts onto the figures.
This display shows the weight of a small bag of Lego pieces, known as a pre-tare. The weight should be between 94.9 and 95.7 grams. This pre-pack weighs 94.94 grams, so it passes inspection. However, as the display shows, five bags were too light and one was too heavy.
Pre-packed Lego pieces on a conveyor belt, at the end of which they are weighed.
This is the packaging department, most of the parts are in bags that go into the container automatically. But some bags are too big and you have to shake them by hand to evenly distribute the parts and make the bags flatter and thinner.
Hundreds of cardboard blanks that will be used to make boxes for Star Wars-themed Lego sets.
This machine controls the height of the boxes so that they can close tightly and pieces do not fall out during transportation.
Boxes of Star Wars-themed Lego sets on an assembly line.
This machine automatically closes the boxes and seals them.
Boxes of Star Wars themed Lego sets are fully packed and ready to ship.
This machine takes two pre-made boxes of Star Wars sets and places them in boxes of six.
A worker picks up two boxes that accidentally fell from the conveyor.
Each of these boxes contains six boxes of Star Wars themed Lego sets.
Now these boxes will go to the Czech Republic, where they will go to the official Lego distribution center, to the warehouse of the plant in the city of Kladno, which, by the way, produces 35-40% (over a million parts) of all the company’s products. There is a giant robotic warehouse, one of the largest in Europe, where orders are processed and products are sent out. retail outlets all over the world.
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Sunday special project of Realnoe Vremya - amazing stories of world brands
The Lego Group is a completely atypical European brand. Along with L'Oreal, Zara, Ritter Sport and literally a dozen other famous brands, it is part of a small group of European companies that have not been sold out by the descendants of the great founders and remain in the hands of members of their families. Children, grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren of Ole Kirk Christiansen The company does not indulge the press with scandals and public showdowns. The company has been using the services of hired managers for operational management since 2004. Thanks to brilliant marketing decisions and tough management, having survived several crises, in 2018 the Lego Group again declared an increase in profits to 10.8 billion Danish kroner. How a modest carpenter from a small Danish village created a company that occupies almost 10% of the world toy market - in the material of Realnoe Vremya.
Ole Kirk Christiansen was born on April 7, 1891 in the small village of Filskove, north of the Danish city of Billund, in the west of the country, and became the tenth child in a family of ordinary farmers - Jens Niels Christiansen and Kirstin Andersen. He was educated until high school, and at the age of 14 he went to work in a factory, where he learned carpentry and carpentry. It is known that Ole Christiansen lived abroad for several years in search of a better life. He worked as a carpenter in Germany and Norway, where he met his future wife Kirstina Sørensen. At the beginning of 1917, they returned to their native Denmark together.
In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, Ole Christiansen loses his job and moves his family to Billund, a fairly large trading city. There he opens a small carpentry workshop. He received his main income from the sale of wooden ladders and ironing boards, the demand for which fell sharply during the global financial crisis. Soon, Ole Christiansen's wife, Kirstin, dies, leaving him with four sons to raise: Johannes, Karl Georg, Gottfried and Gerhard. Ole Christiansen himself will never marry again.
Left without a stable source of income with his young sons, Ole Christiansen had to urgently look for a new niche in order to save his small business. And he quickly found it - in the production of wooden toys, the demand for which, oddly enough, continued to remain consistently high even in difficult economic times for the whole of Europe and the world. Ole's main assistant was his third son, Gottfried Kirk Christiansen, who immediately after his mother's death, at the age of 12, began working with his father.
Christiansen house and carpentry workshop
Having launched the production of toys, the Christiansens began to look for a name for their company: all employees of the mini-workshop (there were only six of them at that time) were instructed to propose their own ideas. According to the official legend, the reward for the most successful option was to be a bottle of excellent homemade wine, and Ole himself won it, making up the abbreviation “Lego” from the Danish words “leg” and “godt”, together meaning “play well” or “play well.” (information varies among sources).
By 1936, the company had a good customer base, an assortment of 42 different wooden toys, and began to expand its workforce. The 40s were a time of fundamental changes for the company, which influenced its entire further history. In 1942, the Christiansens' only factory and warehouse burned down, but the workshop was restored fairly quickly. American writer Ransom Riggs wrote in his book “Mental Thread” that by 1943 the number of employees at the enterprise reached 40 people. A year later, in 1944, Ole Kirk Christiansen officially registered the company, calling it "LegetOjsfabrikken Lego Billund A/S".
In 1947, Ole came across prototypes of a British toy called Kiddicraft Building Blocks, which had been developed and patented in the UK by Kiddicraft founder Hilary Fisher Page. The pieces had pegs on top and hollow bottoms, allowing children to connect them to create complex designs. Christiansen liked the idea of a “constructor” and a few years later he began trying to make his own toy building blocks. True, the first Lego “constructors” were completely different from modern sets: firstly, they were made of wood, and secondly, the parts lacked special tubes inside, which significantly improve the stability of structures built from them.
Moreover, it seemed that the world was not yet ready for plastic toys: as Ransom Riggs wrote, their sales in the early 50s were mediocre at best. However, Lego gradually began to move away from wooden products, switching to brightly colored plastics. In 1947, the Christiansen family purchased the largest injection molding machine in Denmark, which allowed them to begin mass production of plastic toys. Ole Kirk Christiansen did not see the heyday of his company, most of the credit for creating the global Lego brand, ingenious and breakthrough for its time marketing strategies biographers attribute it to Ole's son, Gottfried Kirk Christiansen.
Ole's son, Gottfried, has been involved in his father's business since childhood. In 1950, he was appointed junior vice president of what was at that time a fully developed company. It was Gottfried who came up with the idea of transforming Lego blocks into a single “game system”. In 1953, Lego began selling complete building sets, and in 1954 the company received a trademark for its product, Lego Mursten. The company officially launched the Lego System of Play in 1955, the Lego toy world consisted of 28 different sets and eight toy cars.
The modern Lego brick with a pin and tube connection system was patented at 1:58 pm on January 28, 1958. It was absolutely new technology, which made it possible to connect the parts of the designer much more firmly. By the way, the technology has not changed since then, therefore, theoretically, Lego designers from 1958 and its modern incarnations are completely compatible.
On March 11, 1958, Lego founder Ole Kirk Christiansen dies at the age of 66, and the leadership of the family business is immediately taken over by Gottfried, who in recent years has already taken over most of the operational management of the company. At the same time, Lego decides to sell all "non-brick" Lego products under the Bilo fix brand.
On February 4, 1960, the building in which the Lego wooden workshop was located was struck by lightning and the production burned to the ground. But by that time, plastic Lego toys were already sold throughout Denmark and many European countries, agreements were being prepared to import construction sets to America, plastic provided almost all of the company’s profits, so it was decided not to resume the production of wooden toys and to focus exclusively on plastic ones.
In 1962, Lego began importing its toys to the United States. Access to new profitable market was very important event for a Danish company that was looking to increase global sales. After 2 years, Lego began to provide brief step by step instructions for assembling the models shown on the packaging to their designers. Each time they purchased a new package of Lego bricks, young “builders” could assemble completely different models from the same parts, which significantly boosted sales. Soon, building instructions became an integral part of every Lego building set.
In 1963, cellulose acetate, the material previously used to make Lego building blocks, was replaced by ABS plastic, which is still used today. ABS plastic is non-toxic, less susceptible to discoloration and material deformation, and has proven to be more resistant to aggressive environments and heat than cellulose acetate. Lego pieces, made from ABS plastic in 1963, still retain their shape. The quality of the Christiansen toys, a huge palette of bright colors and original variations of construction sets soon made the brand very popular.
By the mid-1960s, Lego's main factory employed more than 500 people, according to its official website, and the company continued to grow. The first Lego sets were sold in the US in 1961. By 1966, the production of kits was launched, with the help of which children could build many types of buildings and vehicles, and reproduce city streets or race tracks in miniature. A larger version of the construction set, Duplo, designed for toddlers, was added to the range in 1967. A year later, Lego introduced Project Technic for older children and teenagers.
Throughout all the years I've been at the helm family business, Gottfried Christiansen painstakingly developed his idea of a "play system", combining all his toys into a small "universe". Already under him, Lego began conducting surveys of its target audience, identifying the key advantages and disadvantages of its sets. In the late 60s, Gottfried decided that it was time for Lego to leave the toy world and enter the real world. On June 7, 1968, Lego opened its first Legoland amusement park. It was built on an area of 59 hectares in Billund and immediately became a center of attraction for children throughout Denmark. By the way, in the 1990s and 2000s, Lego will continue to build a network of such parks throughout Europe and America.
The famous Lego logo - white with black and yellow outlines on a red background - was designed in 1973. In 1974, the first Lego factory outside Denmark opened in Baar, Switzerland.
Kjell Kirk Christiansen, former CEO of Lego. Photo wikipedia.org In 1979, Gottfried Christiansen handed over the reins of Lego to his son Kjeld Kirk Christiansen, who would lead the company until October 2004. He also has several innovations to his credit, which have definitely brought Lego a share of revenue and the loyalty of small customers. Also in 1979, the company released its first truly themed set - Legoland Space. The success of the space set would encourage Lego designers to create many hundreds of different themed collections. By the way, in 2008 the company will even launch a special Internet resource, Lego Ideas, whose users will be able to propose new ideas for thematic construction sets. The company pays a 1% royalty to the authors of implemented ideas.
Another of Kjeld's accomplishments as head of Lego was the introduction of Lego Minifigures, miniature plastic figurines of characters that populated Lego worlds shortly after their release in 1978. At the same time, the company opens a new line of Lego Technic toys. True, it’s a stretch to call these sets toys: in addition to the usual design parts, Lego Technic included gears, bolts and pins, which made it possible to create more advanced models with more complex technical functions. Some sets in the series later even included small electric motors. Closer to the 90s, Lego began producing robot building kits with its own software platform, Lego Mindstorms.
Under Kjeld Christiansen, Lego also took its first steps into the world of online entertainment. In 1997, the first Lego video game was presented. Since the late 90s, the company began to actively produce thematic collections dedicated to the characters of famous films: Lego Star Wars, Harry Potter Lego, SpongeBob SquarePants and dozens of others sets appeared.
In 2003, the company experienced its first protracted financial crisis. Construction sets have partly lost their appeal for children due to the explosive popularity of computer games, and the expanding Lego Group was weighed down by the burden of numerous real estate in different countries a world that did not bring profit. The huge number of new projects did not allow the company to properly plan marketing and debug logistics. The company's loss, according to the official reports of the Lego Group, by the end of the year amounted to $220 million. Despite anti-crisis measures and massive layoffs, the next year the loss increased by another 20%.
At the same time, realizing the seriousness of the company's situation, from the post general director The Lego Group is leaving Kjeld Kirk Christiansen, grandson of the founder of the Danish toy empire. For the first time in the company's 72 years of existence, the company is headed by a hired manager from outside the Christiansen family - Jorgen Vig Knudstorp. As Marketing Journal columnist Todd Weir writes, the new CEO has completely refocused the company's strategy.
Jorgen Knudstorp. Photo vc.ru First of all, he moved some production from Europe to countries with lower costs, and closed a large Lego plant in Switzerland. Currently, Lego is mainly produced in Denmark, Hungary and the Czech Republic, but there are also production facilities in Mexico. Knudstorp sold off unprofitable foreign real estate and other assets, licensed Legoland parks, streamlined operations and reduced their costs. He also insisted on starting a manufacturing industry software, interactive games and digital design within the group of companies. The result of these transformations was the huge success of the Lego films and the company's new product lines based on Star Wars and Disney products.
By 2005, the company was back in profit, with annual revenues amounting to about $100 million. Over the next 12 years, the Lego Group continued to grow, expanding production facilities in Mexico and Hungary, and increasing profits. In 2011, according to the company's official website, the Lego Group already occupied 7.1% of the global toy market share, and the company employed almost 10 thousand people around the world. By 2015, the company became the world's largest toy manufacturer with sales of $2.1 billion. According to CNN, in 2016 this figure reached $6 billion, and the company employs almost 19 thousand people.
On September 4, 2017, Lego's winning streak over the last decade was broken. Lego announced falling profits and falling sales, as well as laying off 1,400 employees. In October of the same year, former Lego Group CEO was hired. executive director Danfoss Niels Christiansen (namesake, not related to the family of the company's founders). Then, in an official release, the company stated that the loss of income was due to the more competitive environment that had created, in which Lego had to compete not only with traditional competitors Mattel and Hasbro, but also with technology giants.
According to the BBC, the company managed to return to growth again in 2018. Profits increased 4% to DKK 10.8 billion and sales rose 4% to DKK 36.4 billion. The Lego Group is still controlled by the Christiansen family and its foundations.
The material is written based on data from the official website of the Lego Group.
Online newspaper "Real Time"
Produced private company Lego Group, located in Denmark.
The LEGO Group is dedicated to developing creative thinking in children through play and learning. Based on the world-famous LEGO bricks, the company today offers toys, games and educational materials for children in more than 130 countries. The LEGO Group employs approximately 8,000 people and is the world's fifth largest toy manufacturer.
The company's main products, usually called "bricks" Lego, includes colorful, easy-to-connect plastic modules and accompanying accessories, minifigures (also called fans Lego like minifigs) and other designer details. There are other parts Lego, which can be assembled and connected in different ways. For example, toy cars, trucks, planes, trains, buildings, castles, sculptures, ships, spaceships and even robots.
But, first of all, the details of the designer in its various versions are parts universal system. Despite the radical changes that have occurred over the years in the design and purpose of individual parts of the construction set, each of them remains compatible in a certain way with other parts. Bricks Lego, manufactured in 1963, still fit with items made in 2007, and sets for young children are compatible with sets for teenagers.
Bricks, beams, axles, minifigures and other construction elements Lego manufactured to a specified degree of accuracy. After connection, the parts must be securely attached to each other. They cannot be too easy to separate or unreliable when assembled. But they cannot be too difficult to separate, since there should be no difficulty in dismantling one image and creating another. To ensure these conditions, the design elements are manufactured with an accuracy of 2 microns.
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been made from a durable, flexible plastic known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). When manufacturing designer elements, there is precision processing along with small molds for casting, strict quality control of the products, which eliminates significant deviations in the color or thickness of the elements. Used forms are securely hidden to prevent them from falling into the hands of competitors. According to representatives of the Lego Group, about 18 bricks out of every million do not meet the required standards.
Lego bricks are produced in many parts of the world. Plastic injection molding is carried out at one of two plants in Denmark and the Czech Republic. Brick finishing and packaging are carried out in factories in Denmark, the USA, Mexico and the Czech Republic. The annual production of Lego bricks averages about 20 billion (2 × 10 10) pieces, or 6,000 pieces per second.
In 2006, the Lego Group announced a restructuring of its current production organization, including the outsourcing of certain production to Singapore-based Flextronics. The Lego Group plans to close its production facility in Enfield, Connecticut, and outsource the work to a Flextronics plant in Mexico. Flextronics will also oversee production at the plant in Kladno, Czech Republic. In addition, Czech production capacity will be expanded due to the planned closure of the Swiss plant in Baar, which was the main producer of TECHNIC parts.
To create the most popular toy in the world, it was necessary to combine all the best: a fairy-tale atmosphere (and this is in abundance in the homeland of Hans Christian Andersen), high-quality materials, love for the world of childhood and dedication to the idea. Most of this wealth was owned by any Dane, but only Ole Kirk Christiansen could build a company from these fundamental blocks. It was he who invented and created construction set No. 1 - LEGO. And it all started with ladders, stools and ironing boards...
Today, LEGO construction sets are positioned as a toy from which you can build anything you want: from a livable house to a self-programmable robot. But the path to success for its creator was quite long and difficult.
Ole was born in 1891 in western Denmark into a poor farming family. He was the tenth child in the family, and he had no prerequisites for a carefree childhood. Ole began learning carpentry at the age of 14, and by 1916 the young master managed to work as a carpenter abroad (Germany, Norway) and even accumulate a small amount of money, which was enough to purchase the “Billund carpentry shop and lumber yard.” By the way, there was enough money either for a workshop or for a house, so, having bought the workshop, Ole also used it as a home, first only for himself, and then for his wife and four sons.
In the 30s of the twentieth century, he founded a company that produced wooden everyday items. And at the beginning, things were going very well, but the financial crisis took its toll, and, despite the fact that Ole had an excellent assistant (his son Godfrick began working with him at the age of 12), things were getting worse for the company.
He needed an idea, and he got it from his son, who collected scraps of boards, painted them, and played with the neighbor kids. Then Ole thought that people buy toys even in the most difficult times and decided to focus on making wooden toys.
You know what’s surprising: in 1932, Ole Kirk Christiansen was left not only with a barely functioning enterprise, but also with four children in his arms (his wife died), but at the same time he found the strength to continue his business, despite all the circumstances.
The company's name came from combining two Danish words "LEg" and "GOdt", which meant "to play well". And of course, the first products were not the plastic cubes that we are used to seeing, they were wooden cubes, after which there were ducks on wheels, wooden cars and miniature furniture sets.
Things began to improve, but in 1942 the toy factory completely burned down. The family managed to recover and revive production, and the updated version was more reliable and powerful, and the staff of 7 people was expanded to 40.
By the way, “interlocking” plastic cubes were invented not in Denmark, but in the UK. They were manufactured by Kiddicraft in 1947, based on sketches by child psychologist Mr. Hilary Harry Fisher Page. True, the fastening of the first samples was quite weak, and combining the cubes into a stable structure was quite difficult. The owners of LEGO were able to consider the potential of the designer and launched their own line of plastic “bricks”, but with modified fastenings.
For eleven years the company expanded its range, tried to create new elements and introduced plastic cubes, and in 1953 it launched the “LEGO Mursten” production line.
The first sets were subject to unprecedented criticism: that it would be uninteresting, and the plastic was short-lived, and much more, but the Christiansen family did not deviate from its course, and developed its capabilities into an international company with worldwide popularity and recognition.
In addition to automatically connecting parts, the company also developed its own gaming system: a certain set of parts made it possible to create part of a separate plot (house, car, ship). Every year the system became more complex and interesting (new elements, figures, characters, animals were added), which is perhaps why playing with LEGO continues to captivate not only children, but also adults of all ages.
Unlike many other examples, the LEGO company is still a family business, and today its head is the grandson of the founder, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, who continues to create classics with fashion trends in mind.
Thus, the company has several series of construction sets in its arsenal:
A distinctive feature of the designers is the use of a special ultra-precise technology, thanks to which parts of different years of manufacture fit together, and anything can be built from them.
The history of the creation of the LEGO constructor was a long and thorny path that the company overcame with success. Today the company is one of the TOP 10 most popular toy manufacturers. Its production facilities are concentrated in several countries, but the largest production is located in the same place, in Billund (Denmark), where it all began. Today alone, this LEGO factory uses more than 60 tons of plastic per day to produce 21 billion quality parts every year.
The love for the LEGO constructor is so great that every year festivals of LEGO lovers are organized in different parts of the world. Outstanding structures are built there from simple blocks. The tallest tower made of Lego bricks is considered to be a 36-meter structure in Tel Aviv (Israel). In addition to the designer itself, 4 Legoland parks have been built in the world (in Denmark, Great Britain, the USA and Germany), which are visited by millions of people every year.
