Copenhagen (AFP) – Danish toy maker Lego, known for its iconic coloured plastic bricks, said on Tuesday that it would cut eight percent of its global workforce after a drop in sales in the US and Europe.
The company recorded a five percent decline in turnover in the first half of the year to 14.9 billion kroner (2.0 billion euros, $2.3 billion), with net profit down by three percent to 3.4 billion.
Operating profit fell by six percent to 4.4 billion kroner due to “lower revenues and increased costs”.
The world-renowned brand has strongly diversified in recent years, moving into areas such as video games, a hit movie that will have several sequels, cartoons and Legoland amusement parks.
“In the process, we have added complexity into the organisation which now in turn makes it harder for us to grow further,” Lego chairman Jorgen Vig Knudstorp said in a statement.
The company would be turned into a “smaller and less complex organisation than we have today, which will simplify our business model in order to reach more children,” he added. more
After all the movie publicity it bombs? Says a lot about movie publicity. Ain’t worth shit.
I remember when I was a kid you build whatever your imagination could think up. Now Legos are all about kits specifically designed to build once particular scenario. That would take all of the fun out of it for me.
I’m shocked they even have that many people. I’m mean really, plastic enjection mold with few products.
Something rotten in Denmark?
Their problem is that Leggos last forever. They should start making them biodegradable so you have to buy new ones every 5 years, you know, like everything else we buy!
I think it’s the Lego stores that expanded into areas that don’t support the quantity they need to sell to profit.
When the lights go out during storms here, this is their first thing me and the kid grab with the lantern. Then we build lego thingies. Last storm was Mad Max motorcycles…..
Danish Idiots ! 5 % Hello….Mini- Muslim’s Don’t Know How To Build !!!
They Need to Market The Lego Club , The Other Kid’s Will Build Their Leggo Mansions and Now The Little Mus tard’s Can Play Too By Destroying Them !!!
Their Parent’s Will Be Proud and Their Immam Will Do Them Twice !
Sucks for them. I was making about 15 bucks per pound selling old legos they don’t make anymore on eBay. Came across 50 pounds in an abandoned storage locker. It was a good pay day. Maybe Lego should get back to making shit the way they used to.
Yes, old Legos last forever and yet new sets are actually quite expensive.
Used to be you had to be creative to make a particular thing using normal Lego parts. Now, they have tons of specialized unique parts just to make their set scenario.
it’s like they lost their identity. At some point they sold out and chose to go into marketing and pop entertainment. They used to be about building things, creativity and technology.
They had the baby sets, the regular legos, the sets with gears and sprockets and motors, and at one point the had some automation stuff with programming and sensors.
Do they still do any of that higher end stuff any more? Or is it only star wars sets, pirates of caribbean sets, or whatever the latest hollywood endorsement deal is?
Animated CGI movies about Lego Batman and Lego Darth Vader? It’s a joke, a SNL sketch, right?
They’d be better off diversifying into breakfast foods. Say, frozen toaster waffles…
“Lego My Eggo!”
I remember building with Legos; something new every time, limited only by your imagination. The only problem with Legos was (like clamps in woodworking) you never had enough of them!
I have a friend whose son had all the Star Wars Lego stuff; the completed kits were on static display. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the creative stimulation?
they could have branched out into rapid prototyping and 3D printing.
or
“My first nanotech replicator” sets.
they created a fad out of their product, but they forgot about the short lifespan of fads ?
they marketed the crap out of their brand then when the fad goes away they downsize back to normal.
the companies board made a buck.
I guess all of that marketing to girls didn’t work out. You could go back to the market that made you such a success if the PC/SJW’s would allow you to.
“in order to reach more children”
It may have been ‘for the children’ at the beginning, but it’s all about the money now. Don’t even pretend you care about children.
One of the things that contributed to the profit loss was their disastrous ad campaign to convince consumers to decorate children’s breakfast waffles with their product.
Turns out that not that many people wanted to Lego their Eggos.
Legos are a particular hobby shared by my brother and I. I’ve gotten custom mini figures made, and have found ways around paying their ridiculous prices by buying bootleg off of ebay. It’d be nice if they lowered their prices to an actual reasonable one. One can only hope anyway.
Over-priced plastic waste. Globul Warming!!!!!
So I guess “everything (isn’t ) awesome” after all?
Ahhh Legos.
I remember many a late night walk to the bathroom, and stepping on the #@%!ing things, that for some strange reason, my boys always managed to drop on the hallway floor. (I read somewhere recently, that the Batman head, is a real sumabitch.)
Brings back precious memories it does…
Legos were for sissies, real kids used Erector Sets, nuts, bolts, wheels and gears.
Hours of fun, real men don’t read instructions.
Kind of like IKEA.
My sons and I still love Legos. We have a TON of them – including mine from the 70s. They need to diversify practically.
Do they sell a lot of Legos south of the border? I doubt it. No real market loss. Negotiate with Trump and build the border wall with Lego bricks and superglue. He could have half a million 7-10 year old Legomaniacs get it done in a week for the cost of a T-shirt, “I Built the Wall!”
Yeah, as a dad I can vouch for the fact that those things are like land mines when you step on one with bare feet in the middle of the night.