The Lego factory burned down three times. The first fire was started by the founder’s own children.
Between those fires came the Great Depression, the death of the founder’s wife, a family loan that came with orders to quit making toys, and a costly bet on a material customers didn’t want. Here’s how a carpenter in a small Danish town kept rebuilding until he had the Lego brick.
The first fire
In 1924, Ole Kirk Christiansen ran a carpentry workshop in Billund, Denmark. His young sons, Karl and Godtfred, were playing with wood shavings near a glue heater when the shavings caught fire. “The whole building burned to the ground,” Godtfred, then 4, later recalled, according to Lego’s company history.
Wait, what? The company behind the Lego brick lost its first workshop to two little boys and a pile of wood scraps.
Toys nobody asked him to make
Christiansen rebuilt. Then the Depression hit. By early 1932 he had laid off all but seven employees, History Hit reported. His wife died that year, History.com reported, leaving him to raise four young children alone.
With fewer customers for furniture, he started making wooden toys: piggy banks, pull toys and small vehicles, according to Wikipedia’s history of Lego. When his siblings offered a bailout loan, they tried to make him stop making toys as a condition, History.com reported. He refused. In 1934, the company took the name Lego, from the Danish “leg godt,” meaning “play well.”
The third coat of varnish
One of the early best sellers was a wooden pull-along duck. As a boy, Godtfred once saved money on an order by giving the ducks two coats of varnish instead of three. His father made him collect the boxes, varnish the ducks again and deliver them a second time. “Godtfred, don’t you know that’s wrong?” he asked, according to Lego. In a booklet Lego later published, the father tells his son to do it alone, “even if it takes you all night.”
Godtfred later carved the lesson into signs for the workshop walls: “Only the best is good enough,” Lego’s booklet says.
The second fire and the plastic bet
In 1942, an electrical short started a fire that destroyed the factory, its stock and its blueprints, History Hit reported. Christiansen rebuilt again.
After the war he made his riskiest move yet. He bought Denmark’s first plastic injection-molding machine, History.com reported. It cost 30,000 crowns, more than double the previous year’s profits, History Hit reported. The early plastic bricks were inspired by self-locking bricks from a British company, Kiddicraft. Customers didn’t like them at first. They preferred wood or metal, and many shipments came back, according to Wikipedia.
The company kept improving the brick. In January 1958, it patented the design with tubes underneath that let bricks lock firmly together, History Hit reported. Christiansen died that same year.
The fire that made the decision
On Feb. 4, 1960, part of the woodworking factory burned down. The next day, Godtfred, now running the company, decided Lego would stop making wooden toys and put everything into the brick and its System of Play, Lego’s history says.
It took three fires, but the company that started in wood finally let wood go. The plastic brick it nearly gave up on is the reason anyone knows the name.
Steal this
Here’s what this means for your business:
- What standard would you make someone redo all night to meet? Ole Kirk sent his son back for one coat of varnish. Does your team know where your line is without you having to say it?
- What are you still making out of habit? Wood was Ole Kirk’s whole life, and it took a fire for Lego to stop. If your building burned down tomorrow, which parts of the business wouldn’t you rebuild?
- What bet are you avoiding because the first customers said no? Lego spent more than double a year’s profit on plastic, and customers sent the first bricks back. Is there an idea you dropped too early because the first answer was no?
Sources: The Lego Group history; Lego House wooden duck booklet; History.com; History Hit; Wikipedia: History of Lego.
What would you rebuild, and what would you let burn? Owners trade answers inside C-SUITE NETWORK™.
