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Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

manufacturingdive.com

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Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#81

Post by doubled112 »

mlyle wrote: post #51
bhaak wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an organizational problem, not a problem with Lego bricks. You can never have enough Lego. :)

It's not an organizational problem... it's a swoooosh-playing-with-my-lego-thing-oops-a-piece-shattered-off-and-I-can't-find-it problem. And then later, the lego piece waits for nightfall, and crawls out from the dark nook to the middle of the most inconvenient walkway for its moment to strike.

All this time I thought that it was house hippos playing with the ones I dropped.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#82

Post by amelius »

casion wrote: post #13
minton wrote: post #5

I’m so confused by Lego’s market share. They sell cheap plastic at insane premiums. Why is there not more competition?

Because they are the best quality, in every dimension, and when something is almost purely a hobby then many people are willing to pay a premium for a friction-free experience. There are other brands that are just fine, but you will occasionally get missing pieces, poor fitment, poor/strange construction etc... With LEGO you'll not get any of those (except the occasional strange construction). I used to buy ~50/50 LE…

That might be true, but it's still insane that a LEGO brick costs more than a small microcontroller which requires like 1000x the engineering effort if not more.

The free market is clearly failing here.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#83

Post by dclowd9901 »

29athrowaway wrote: post #41

The Legoland park was pretty disappointing.

It’s not great, but I do think it’s best enjoyed by a child of a certain age. I’m gonna go with 7-11 years of age.

It’s not even close to Disneyland, but if your kid likes legos and they’re of that age group they’ll have a good time.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#84

Post by shadowgovt »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #9
minton wrote: post #5

I’m so confused by Lego’s market share. They sell cheap plastic at insane premiums. Why is there not more competition?

Tight tolerances and good quality control cost money. I remember trying to play with my friends megablocks as a kid and they just wouldn’t stay together well There are also some Chinese companies making decent compatible bricks now

For a long time, that was a function of patents: LEGO bricks actually have slightly concave pegs, like inverted cones.

Those patents only recently expired, which is one of the reasons they pushed so hard into licensing to distinguish their brand.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#85

Post by [deleted] »

dukeyukey wrote: post #62
obblekk wrote: post #6

Interesting learnings for me from this article: - Lego operates multiple $1B+ factories around the world - they are not just a design and marketing company - 1400 manufacturing jobs in Virginia expected - not just an automated thing. Anyone know what changed economically to justify the high US labor costs? Particularly compared to MX - 100% Carbon neutral via on-site Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny). No off…

> Anyone know what changed economically to justify the high US labor costs? Particularly compared to MX My understanding is the US: 1. Is more politically, economically, and frankly physically secure than Mexico. 2. Has cheaper energy 3. Has a better-trained manufacturing workforce for the kinds of machine Lego is gonna use.

[deleted]

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#86

Post by GalenErso »

mejutoco wrote: post #50
minton wrote: post #5

I’m so confused by Lego’s market share. They sell cheap plastic at insane premiums. Why is there not more competition?

They were having more and more competition, and they focused on licenses: star wars, harry potter, etc. Others can copy lego (with less quality) but the licensing deals protect them. Very wise.

Lego is also often the only game in town.

Star Wars' Kenobi TV show had this sleek black ship to transport the Imperial Inquisitors. Lego made a set of it. No other toy manufacturer has, so if you want to play with your own Inquisitor shuttle, Lego is the only choice. Why, I wonder? There are Star Wars toys that are not Lego, so why are those toy makers not jumping on the opportunity? I honestly don't get it. Unless Lego has a deal with Disney to be the only ones authorized to make toys of certain vehicles/scenes/characters.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#87

Post by homarp »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #66
brookst wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Commodities are priced at cost plus. Differentiated goods are priced based on value delivered.

>Differentiated goods are priced based on value delivered. I prefer “perceived utility” rather than “value delivered”.

hence the cost of linux centos (before being killed)

“value delivered”: same as RHEL

“perceived utility”: a path to RHEL subscription

Since the second is not true anymore for IBM, centos was converted to be less of a threat to RHEL by decreasing its delivered value, and offering a 'new' utility: kind of work like RHEL but please pay to get the full RHEL experience.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#88

Post by seanmcdirmid »

amelius wrote: post #82
casion wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are the best quality, in every dimension, and when something is almost purely a hobby then many people are willing to pay a premium for a friction-free experience. There are other brands that are just fine, but you will occasionally get missing pieces, poor fitment, poor/strange construction etc... With LEGO you'll not get any of those (except the occasional strange construction). I used to buy ~50/50 LE…

That might be true, but it's still insane that a LEGO brick costs more than a small microcontroller which requires like 1000x the engineering effort if not more. The free market is clearly failing here.

Pretty sure if you aren’t buying the microcontroller wholesale and in quantity, it will cost more than a Lego in a typical set.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#90

Post by dclowd9901 »

swarnie wrote: post #58
GenerWork wrote: post #52

This makes it sound like there's quite the demand for Lego sets/bricks. Has their market (people who want to play with Legos) grown a lot? I stopped playing with Legos about 2 decades ago, so I haven't really kept up with any potential growth that they've experienced/predicted to experience.

My understanding is the company was pretty dead a decade or so ago, since then its had a massive revival after moving away from the family-run-inheritance model. Three (anecdotal) things i've seen with Lego: > Its a toy that old and young can play with together which is semi-intelligent/challenging. Parents and Grandparents seem to be the driver of sales for the physical product rather than the kids. > They have bran…

Yeah, the licensing aspect especially. Also, recognition of their fans by way of their fan-created sets. It’s almost unbelievable to me that it took them that long to have such a division.
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