There were about five million Lego branded toys sold in the U.S. in December, a major point of pride for the Danish toymaker’s President Soren Torp Laursen, who spoke to about 500 Greater Hartford business leaders at the Connecticut Business & Industry Association’s economic summit last week in Hartford.
Laursen, who was the event’s keynote speaker, gave the audience a window into the toymaker’s dramatic turnaround over the last decade, which saw the company pull itself from the brink of bankruptcy in 2003 to recording record revenues in 2013.
“The last 10 years have been pretty awesome despite the recession and economy,” said Laursen, whose company employs 900 of its 12,500 worldwide employees in Enfield.
In 2000, Laursen said the family-owned business lost its way by diversifying too quickly into unfamiliar product lines like clothing and watches and not listening to customer’s wants and desires. The results were nearly catastrophic: the company lost $300 million in 2003, was forced to sell off assets and layoff hundreds of employees, and nearly went bankrupt.
After some deep soul-searching, Lego refocused on its core product: building-block toys. The company also promoted innovation, including moving into the digital space and developing new franchises like Lego Friends, which are blocks geared toward girls. The company also invested in cross-media storytelling, and developed a TV series on Cartoon Network and “The Lego Movie,” to help grow the brand.
Those efforts, Laursen said, have largely been successful: The company earned a record $4.6 billion in 2013 and expects to announce even better results for 2014. Moving forward, Laursen said he sees even greater opportunity as the company still has “70 percent of the world to sell too.” China and Brazil offer huge potential growth markets, and he even thinks Lego can double its U.S. sales.
In terms of Lego’s Connecticut presence, Laursen said the company has added about 100 jobs in each of the last few years in Enfield rebuilding its workforce to around 900 people. They are mainly professional, corporate office workers. The company, however, has no plans to re-establish manufacturing/distribution operations in Enfield, which were shuttered in 2006 and moved to Mexico.
