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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

#111

Post by elpool2 »

bluetomcat wrote: post #31
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?

The quality of the bricks is generally high, but set design is something they capitalise on. Instead of selling themed playsets with minifigures and encouraging kids to build new adventure worlds, nowadays they sell mostly pop-culture-referenced plastic display models with tiny finicky 1x1 pieces that are of not much use for general building. These models employ complex building techniques, but are not easy to turn i…

I helped my kid put together a lego kit recently that did something interesting. It was a spaceship but the instructions were kind of a story, and there were parts where it just went “ok, now it needs to go faster, what can you add to do that?”, and there were lots of extra pieces (wings, boosters, other spaceshippy things) to allow for a bit of extra creativity. My kid loved it.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#113

Post by munificent »

akiselev wrote: post #76
rdsnsca wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also the largest manufacturer of rubber tires in the world https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/100909-la...

They're the "largest" manufacturer of tiny little toy car wheels that use a few grams of rubber. It's a paid ad for LEGO, not a serious record.

As opposed to those serious Guiness records like "farthest eyeball pop", "loudest purr by a domestic cat", "most face flesh tunnels", "most tennis balls held in the mouth (by a dog)", "most eyebrow waxes performed in eight hours by a team", and "longest head massage chain".

Guiness has always been a half-commercial silly enterprise. It's literally founded by a beer brand to resolve pub trivia arguments.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#114

Post by bcrosby95 »

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, my neighbor is a 60 year old retired firefighter and he has thousands of dollars worth of Legos that he has bought and assembled. Basically everything they put out for star wars.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#115

Post by meibo »

They really need to work out their quality deficits first, a lot of recent mishaps have been inexcusable.

You can't sell a $600 display model(which is a ridiculous price in the first place) with very visible gate locations from the molding process and uneven colors. These are purely caused by cheap molds and plastic mixes - it didn't used to be this way, but somehow they decided that they had to start jeopardizing their good reputation for some cheap gains.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#116

Post by sgtnoodle »

KevSlater wrote: post #105

Funny how nobody mentions plastic pollution, which is the main output of this factory.

Legos are a very creative and inspiring toy and art form. As a kid I got thousands of hours of imaginative play from them. There are far less useful things being made out of plastic in large quantities. I myself despise happy meal toys for the needless waste.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#117

Post by jeppester »

KevSlater wrote: post #105

Funny how nobody mentions plastic pollution, which is the main output of this factory.

I thought the same. But Lego is arguably more sturdy and reusable than most toys available.

I wonder what the "half-life" is for various types and brands of toys. I would be surprised if it doesn't vary wildly.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#118

Post by eastbound »

meibo wrote: post #115

They really need to work out their quality deficits first, a lot of recent mishaps have been inexcusable. You can't sell a $600 display model(which is a ridiculous price in the first place) with very visible gate locations from the molding process and uneven colors. These are purely caused by cheap molds and plastic mixes - it didn't used to be this way, but somehow they decided that they had to start jeopardizing th…

Especially since Lego is expensive because of the high quality.

Re: Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

#119

Post by newjersey »

GalenErso wrote: post #69
dukeyukey wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Maybe they just received some good old-fashioned tax incentives? It's not always about geopolitics.

My guess is that Lego customers are also increasingly older.

I mean look at the millennium falcon.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/millennium-falcon-75192

https://i.imgur.com/vsxVnSJ.png

ages 16+

When I think of fancy lego, I think of something like this https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-medium-creative-bric... because it has wheels and stuff, not just bricks.

I would have imagined "regular" lego was just different sizes of bricks, not even a sloped "roof" brick or wheels.

Also I think "made in USA" might help sales in the US and at the very least calms investors?

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