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It's all about children

- a profile of the LEGO Group in 1997

The LEGO Group is one of the world's largest toy manufacturers, employing 9,200 people in 50 companies in 29 countries. The LEGO Group is based in Billund, Denmark, and owned and managed by the Kirk Kristiansen family.

Children are our most important concern. Our basic business concept and the foundation for all LEGO products and activities is that we take children and their needs seriously.

Our goal is, in 2005, for the LEGO logo and name to be known among families with children as the strongest brand in the world. Our core business area is the development, production, marketing and distribution of the LEGO toy system. There are LEGO factories in five countries: Denmark, Switzerland, the USA, Brazil and Korea. In Brazil and Korea, production is for the local market. The factory in the USA serves the large North American market, including Canada and Mexico. The LEGO Group also has three mould factories, in Switzerland and Germany.

In 1996, LEGO products were sold in about 130 countries throughout the world. During the past 40 years, around 300 million children have played with LEGO bricks. Every year, children enjoy billions of hours of creative play with LEGO products. We are the clear leader in the construction-toy sector, with a striking high global market share.

In addition to our core business, we are also involved in the exciting opportunities and challenges in what we term New Business Areas:

  • LEGOLAND parks - development and operation of family parks
  • LEGO Licensing - licence agreements for e.g. children's clothes, books, watches, bed linen, puzzles and computer games (1997)
  • LEGO Dacta - products for kindergartens and schools
  • LEGO Media - development and marketing of computer software for children

The early years in the LEGO Group story

The LEGO story began in 1932 - in fact, even earlier, when Ole Kirk Christiansen, the LEGO Group's founder, bought Billund Maskinsnedkeri og Tømrerforretning (a carpentry and joinery business) in 1916. At that time, Billund - located in the middle of southern Jutland's moorland - was just a little village with a handful of houses. Today the town has close to 6,000 inhabitants.

The depression in the 1930s, which began with the Wall Street Crash in 1929, had an impact on the entire industrialised world. As a result, times were hard for Denmark's main activity at that time: agriculture. Local farmers were Ole Kirk Christiansen's most important customers and the greatly reduced demand for his services almost pushed him into bankruptcy.

Ole Kirk Christiansen didn't give up. He believed that, although people couldn't afford to build houses, there was - in the short term - business potential in producing wooden toys. He realised that children always needed toys. So, in 1932, he and a few employees began producing wooden toys by hand in the small workshop.

A name for the company and its products

In 1934, Ole Kirk Christiansen came up with a name for his toys and the workshop - "LEGO". The name combines the two Danish words "LEg GOdt" ("play well" in English). At a later date it was discovered that in Latin the meanings of "lego" include "I put together" and "I read".

Running his company under the motto "Only the best is good enough", Ole Kirk Christiansen gradually built up a successful business, selling his high-quality, robust toys to toy shops all over Denmark and, through them, to Danish consumers. It was a struggle in the early years, but it was at this time that the foundations were laid for the worldwide success the company was later to achieve.

Godtfred Kirk Christiansen (GKC), the founder's son, was actively involved in the company from 1932 onwards. Although he was then only 12 years old, he helped out in the workshop when he was not at school - on alternate days! He was employed on a full-time basis after his 14th birthday in 1934.

By the end of the 1930s, the LEGO company manufactured a wide variety of products - vehicles, animals, Yo-Yos and other wooden toys. In the 1940s, there were around 150 items in the range. The workshop became a small factory and by 1950 the number of employees had risen to 65.

New materials, new methods

Many new materials and technological processes were developed during the Second World War. But this had little effect on the LEGO company in a country under German occupation and where a ban had been imposed on the import of toys.

Among the new discoveries that were later to have a revolutionary impact was plastics. At the LEGO company, Ole Kirk Christiansen realised that there was great potential in manufacturing products from this new material. The company bought its first injection-moulding machine in 1947. Toys made of plastics - rattles, small dolls, animals and building bricks - now joined wooden toys in the LEGO range.

A rather primitive forerunner to the LEGO brick was launched in 1949. The building elements, with either four or eight studs, were in the first instance sold only in Denmark, under the name "Automatic Binding Bricks". These elements - their name was changed a few years later to "LEGO Bricks" - could only be stacked one on top of the other.

The LEGO System of Play

In 1954, with the LEGO brick as his starting point, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen developed the "LEGO System of Play" - the construction system consisting of a variety of building elements with which we are familiar today. The products were marketed in boxed sets which, apart from LEGO bricks, also included small moulded vehicles and figures, as well as a town map made from cardboard, opening up the possibility of different kinds of play.

These new toys were launched in 1955 - at first only in Denmark. A number of Danish toy retailers were more than a little sceptical about the product's prospects but time was to prove their assessment wrong...

In 1957, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen made an epoch-making discovery. His discovery, for which he applied for patents internationally in 1958, was the tubes placed inside the hollow LEGO bricks, which increased the bricks' clutching strength. As a result, models were stable and the number of ways in which the bricks could be combined virtually infinite.

Exports to Norway and Sweden began in the early 1950s. The first proper sales company outside Denmark was founded in Germany in 1956. Sales companies in a number of other European countries were established in 1960, including Great Britain, France, Switzerland and Sweden.

A fire destroyed the LEGO company's wooden-toy warehouse in 1960. The management decided that the production of wooden toys should be discontinued and that the company's resources should be concentrated on the further development, production and marketing of the LEGO System of Play.

The technical quality of the bricks was further improved in 1963, when ABS plastics replaced cellulose acetate as the main raw material.

Developing a product

In 1996, LEGO products are sold in more than 60,000 retail outlets in about 130 countries. The LEGO Group has for many years been one of the foremost names in the international toy industry. We come half-way down the league of the world's Top Ten toy manufacturers - the only European company in the list.

The 1997 range consists of 515 sets put together from 1,964 different elements. There are six product lines - LEGO PRIMO, LEGO DUPLO, LEGO SCALA, LEGO SYSTEM, LEGO TECHNIC and LEGO DACTA. But (nearly all) the elements in the six lines are compatible with each other - including the elements dating from the 1950s. During the period 1949-1997, some 170 billion LEGO elements and some 11 billion LEGO DUPLO elements were moulded...

Continuous renewal is one of the hallmarks

of the LEGO Group: new ideas, new themes, new sets, new elements. As a result, children always have new ways to build, new ways to play - and new ways to think and learn. For example, one of this year's innovations is a LEGO TECHNIC set that includes a CD-ROM containing building instructions and lots of fascinating extra material. The LEGO Group went on the Internet in 1996, which was also the year in which we established software development departments in both Billund and London.

Our objective is to design our products so that they meet children's fundamental needs and for them to help shape and develop their skills and personality. Everything has to be of high technical quality and all products must have substantial educational and play value. "We don't have to be the biggest but we must remain the best," said Godtfred Kirk Christiansen on one occasion. It is a sentiment that continues to apply.

Principles with perspective We take the needs and development of children seriously. That is the basic concept for the large and growing LEGO range, which provides a wealth of opportunities for building and play. Every LEGO set appeals to children's creativity. They are inspired to build a variety of things. The only limits are the individual child's imagination, age, stage of development - and, of course, the number of elements!

Our vision is for people all over the world to experience positive, happy associations every time they see a LEGO logo, see a LEGO element or hold it in their hands. Imagination, exuberance, spontaneity, self-expres-sion, quality - these are some of the words we wish to link with the LEGO name, together with values like development, concern for others and innovation.

LEGOLAND Billund

The LEGOLAND park in Billund is a family park containing LEGO models of buildings and scenes from many countries. More than 45 million LEGO bricks have been used to build the models.

LEGOLAND Billund, which opened in 1968, quickly became Denmark's most popular tourist attraction outside Copenhagen (it welcomed close to 1.3 million visitors in 1996). The 1997 outdoor season is seven months long, starts 22nd March and ends 26th October.

Every year large, new LEGO Theme Shows are on display in the park's indoor exhibitions. They comprise scenes put together with great creativity and an eye for detail. LEGOLAND Billund also has several collections - for example, old mechanical toys and antique dolls - as well as the famous Irish doll's house "Titania's Palace".

LEGOLAND Windsor

The first LEGOLAND park outside Denmark - LEGOLAND Windsor in Great Britain - opened in March 1996. LEGOLAND Windsor is approx. 35 kilometres west of central London and has Windsor castle as its nearest neighbour. The park has an area of approx. 100,000 m2. The Windsor park welcomed 1.4 million visitors in its first season. In 1997, LEGOLAND Windsor is open daily from 10:00-18:00 from 21st March to 28th September.

Other LEGOLAND parks

The first LEGOLAND park in the USA will open to the public in 1999 at Carlsbad, north of San Diego in southern California.

Our vision for the future is to open a LEGOLAND park every third year somewhere in the world. The precise pace will be determined by the size of the projects and experience acquired from Billund, Windsor and Carlsbad.

The LEGO Group today

Today, the LEGO Group comprises 50 companies on six continents. There are 9,200 employees (excl. temporary employees), of whom 4,210 work in Denmark.
LEGO products are manufactured in Denmark, Switzerland, the USA, Brazil and Korea. All the companies in the LEGO Group are owned by the Kirk Kristiansen family in Denmark. There are no shareholders outside the family and Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (49), grandson of the founder, is the main shareholder. Since 1979 he has been President and CEO of LEGO A/S, the LEGO Group's international management company. He is also chairman of the board of several LEGO companies. The business's founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, died in 1958 at the age of 67. His son, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen died in July 1995 at the age of 75 after more than 60 years of commitment to the LEGO company.

The old motto - now as before

The motive force for all activities in the LEGO Group now and in the future is a basic respect for children and their needs. This was also the underlying reason for the foundation in 1985 of the LEGO Prize - an international prize of DKK 1 million that cannot be applied for. The prize is awarded annually to people and/or organisations that make special efforts to improve the conditions under which many children live. Since 1985, 24 people, institutions and organisations in 17 countries have received the LEGO Prize.

"Only the best is good enough" - Ole Kirk Christiansen's old motto from the 1930s applies in the 1990s more than ever before.

http://www.LEGO.com

© 1997 The LEGO Group
TM and ® Trademarks of the LEGO Group
Page updated January 29, 1997.
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