From wooden ducks to building blocks in space: an inspiring LEGO story
Miscellaneous / / April 03, 2023
A company that survived several fires, the Great Depression and World War II.
In 2021, LEGO was recognized largest toy company in the world. And no wonder: over the 90 years of its existence, the famous plastic "bricks" have been produced so much that there are 62 pieces for every inhabitant of the planet.
However, the path to success was long. We tell the story of LEGO founder Ole Kirk Christensen, a Dane who lifted himself out of poverty by believing in the power of children's toys.
"Trust in God's Grace"
Ole Kirk Christiansen was born in 1891 in Denmark. In addition to him, the family had 12 more children. They lived in poverty, so in his memoirs Ole Kirk later wrote: "We grew up in a modest but good house, trusting in the mercy of God."
From the age of 7, Christiansen was tending sheep and cows and helping to run the household. And later, as a teenager, he became an apprentice with his brother, a carpenter and joiner. Having received the necessary skills there, at the age of 20 he went to Germany and Norway to work.
Having saved 10,000 Danish crowns, he returned to his homeland and bought "Billund joinery and lumberyard". Doors, windows, kitchen cabinets, coffins, chests of drawers, cart bodies were produced there.
At the same time, changes occurred in Ole Kirk's personal life - he married the "good Christian" Christina Sorensen, who later bore him four sons.
"It's high time to expand anyway"
For several years, Christiansen has established himself as a master of his craft. He was the head carpenter of Billund, a small town in Denmark. And, perhaps, he would have remained the owner of a small carpentry business, if not for his sons.
One Sunday in 1924, the two youngest children, Gottfried and Karl, were playing in their father's workshop. Suddenly they had an idea - to light a fire in the glue heater. However, something did not go according to plan, and the sparks fell on the wood shavings. building instantly broke out. The workshop and the house burned to the ground. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
The children expected the worst punishment. Standing in front of the ashes, they asked for forgiveness in tears. However, surprisingly, the elder Christiansen did not scold them. He just shrugged and said: "It was high time to expand anyway."
Kirk's son, Gottfried Christiansen, later said that he made his first "contribution" to the business at the age of 4, when he burned down the old workshop.
In order to draw up a plan for a new house, Ole Kirk invited the architect Jesper Jespersen. To avoid a fire, he designed a new dwelling made of bricks.
Now this house has become a Danish landmark. Tourists know Billund as a city of LEGO - there is a museum and Lego House with attractions.
"My World Collapsed"
Literally 5 years after the fire, in 1929, a new disaster struck: the Wall Street stock market collapsed and the Great Depression began.
Many Western companies went bankrupt. The US and UK have imposed import restrictions. Because of this, the Danish farming communities that supplied the bacon and butter there were severely affected. There was no profit.
Ole Kirk Christiansen
Memoirs of the founder of the LEGO company.
I looked to the future with hope. But two months later my world collapsed. A crisis has come in agriculture. Since we owed our existence to farmers, this also affected us. It was a difficult time. We didn't know what lay ahead of us.
So Ole Kirk lost his main customers: they could no longer afford to buy carpentry products from him. Therefore, in 1931, Christiansen had to let go of his last apprentice.
A year later, a more terrible tragedy happened: the wife of Ole Kirk died. He was left alone with four small children and a ruined business.
“Could you do something more useful?”
Ole Kirk understood that in order to stay afloat, he needed to come up with something. He got the idea to sell stepladders, ironing boards and other useful things in everyday life - the only thing that could make money at that time.
After processing the wood, he had scraps left, which could also be used for something. Then he decided to realize his old idea - to make toys for children. One of the first to become famous wooden duck. Later, yo-yos, cars and airplanes appeared in the carpenter's assortment.
One of the buyers became interested in his activities, and he suggested that Kirk make a whole batch of toys for sale in the store.
Ole Kirk Christiansen
Memoirs of the founder of the LEGO company.
In the summer we were asked to make toys for Jens W. Olesen, and since we had no other job, we looked at it as a gift from God.
However, the store that Kirk made toys for soon went bankrupt, and the big deal fell through. It happened before the New Year, 1933. Due to the fact that all the money went to the production of the party, the family had nothing to eat.
Kirk mustered up his courage and, although he didn't have good presentation skills, went around the neighborhood and offered people to buy his toys. Some were able to pay him off only with the help of barter. But even this suited the desperate carpenter. On New Year the family managed to lay a modest table.
Nevertheless, this did not extinguish the fuse in Christiansen. He believed in the potential of toys and gradually began to pay more and more attention to them. He even decided to buy an expensive milling machine that would improve the quality of his products. Equipment cost 3,000 Danish crowns. For comparison: a house at that time could be bought for 4,000–5,000.
At the same time, he was not even afraid to take credit for the development of production. In order for the bank to give him money, he asked his brothers and sisters to act as guarantors. However, I ran into a misunderstanding. One of them asked reproachfully: “Could you do something more useful?”
The attitude to the industry of children's toys at that time was not serious, so the family sincerely did not understand why invest in something that would not bring any profit in the future. Nevertheless, some still trusted their brother and did not lose.
Ole Kirk Christiansen
Memoirs of the founder of the LEGO company.
It wasn't until the day I said to myself, "You'll either have to give up the old craft entirely or get the toys out of your mind" that I began to see the possibilities. And the decision turned out to be correct.
In 1935, Christiansen stopped making household goods and focused only on making toys.
"Play well"
When Ole Kirk decided to concentrate on making toys, he realized that the company's old name, Billund Wood Works, no longer fit.
Then he decided to organize a competition among his employees for the best brand name. The winner was to get a bottle of house wine.
However, she never left the walls of the Christiansen house, because Kirk himself ended up coming up with a new name. He folded together two Danish words "Leg godt", which means "play well", and got LEGO. A little later, people noticed that in translation from Latin this word also means “I collect”.
With the name Kirk wanted to emphasize that the company makes products for children. And also the fact that in the first place she has quality.
Kirk was proud that he had never sold a marriage in his life. He carefully examined all products and did not allow bad toys to reach the shelves.
Everyone in the company knew how valuable the quality of the products was to him. However, one of his sons, Gottfried, who helped Kirk in the workshop from the age of 12, learned this only from his own sad experience.
One evening he came to his father and said: “Today was a great day, dad! I found a good way for us to save money." "What do you mean, buddy?" Kirk asked him. “I have just donated two boxes of our toy ducks to the Danish Cooperative. Usually we cover them with three coats of varnish, but this time I applied only two! I thought that by doing this in the future, we could reduce our material costs.”
However, instead of praising Ole, Kirk looked sternly at his son and said, “Don't you know it's so wrong? Go back, get those boxes, and give the ducks another coat of varnish. You won't go to bed until the job is done."
And although some might consider this punishment too harsh, Gottfried, who became the owner of LEGO after the death of his father, later recalled that this was one of the most important lessons for him. motto company to this day is the phrase: "Only the best is good enough."
“I struggled to understand why I was doing all this”
Soon the Second World War began. However, it did not affect the demand for toys in any way - on the contrary, it became higher than ever. In the first two years of the war, LEGO doubled its sales.
The point was that at first Denmark stopped the import of imported things, and later banned use metal and rubber in the manufacture of children's toys. So LEGO, with its wooden ducks, got rid of a lot of competitors in the market in one fell swoop.
But this happiness was short-lived. In 1942, a fire broke out again at the factory during an air raid.
Ole Kirk Christiansen
Memoirs of the founder of the LEGO company.
At three o'clock in the morning one of the young men ran up to me and started shouting: "The factory is on fire!" This message was shocking and painful. I struggled to understand why I was doing all this. But then I stopped for a moment and bowed before God. It was my gratitude to him - the one who knows everything. And I immediately felt peace in my mind.
The factory - his life's work - burned to the ground. Ole Kirk even wanted to refuse to restore it. Insurance could not cover the losses and the construction of a new plant. Only a sense of responsibility to his four sons and 15 employees made him do it anyway. In addition, the bank was able to provide Kirk with the necessary credit.
So instead of a woodworking plant, the first specialized toy factory was built. It has become much more modern than its predecessor and was better suited for mass production. Thanks to this, the performance of LEGO grew, and the number of employees has already increased to 40 people.
“We can sell these bricks all over the world”
By the end of the Second World War, it became increasingly difficult for Ole Kirk to obtain good quality beech wood. In addition, he wanted to experiment with new materials.
Therefore Kirk invested into an injection molding machine, an expensive plastic injection molding machine. In 1947 she was taken to Billund. Samples came with her - plastic Kiddicraft toys, one of which was the famous brick.
Yes, LEGO never invented the construction set. Since 1935, like many other companies, it has produced prefabricated wooden toys, but nothing more.
The idea of "auto-fastening blocks" was patented Briton Hirsh Page, owner of Kiddicraft. However, unlike Ole Kirk, he did not see potential in her. So the LEGO Group later contacted Kiddicraft to buy the patent from them. The company was not opposed and even, on the contrary, wished good luck with the bricks, as they failed to make this product a success.
The sons did not share their father's zeal for novelty. They urged Kirk to go back to beech: "You can make pretty, cute things out of plastic, but wood is a stronger material." What does he answered them: “Why don’t you believe? If we do everything right, we can sell these bricks all over the world!” It is now clear that these words were prophetic.
In 1949 Kirk finalized Page's invention and produced the first set of his own bricks.
“Before, children were given only ready-made solutions”
And although all the forces of LEGO were thrown into the development of new material, the bricks did not immediately manage to become a bestseller.
In the 1940s and 1950s, LEGO products were not much different from those of other companies. Their assortment included painted wooden animal figurines, plastic balls, Board games.
Moreover, until the end of the 1940s, the most purchased product was a toy gun, first made of wood and then of plastic. Kirk explained that he took this step to compete with other companies.
Being a staunch pacifist, Kirk insisted that this be the first and last toy weapon produced by LEGO.
So how did LEGO manage to make bricks their thing? Gottfried is to be thanked for this - the very son who set fire to his father's first workshop. In a conversation with a foreign buyer, he realized what the children really lacked.
“Before, children were given only ready-made solutions. But they need something else that will boost their imagination and creativity.” said he suggested to his father that they introduce a system into LEGO products, thanks to which children can use different parts, combine them with each other and create something new.
In order to implement this, a number of problems had to be solved. One of them was that the figures assembled from bricks fell apart - the parts were not attached to each other. There were no grooves in them, with which it would be possible to link them together. This gave Godfried the idea to make additional holes on the back side.
In addition, there was another problem: bricks from different sets did not connect with each other. Therefore, Gottfried introduced for all of them a single standardwhich is still in effect.
That is, if you purchase LEGO sets from 1970 and 2020, the parts in them can be connected together.
The LEGO brick as we know it now was patented January 28, 1958. This was the last major decision the company made under the leadership of Ole Kirk Christensen. He died of a heart attack 41 days later.
Since then, the company has expanded and transformed significantly. Now it is no longer just a factory for the production of designers, but a whole empire that has its own LEGO Land - an amusement park, a feature film and a computer game released with the participation of the famous yellow men. LEGO is known all over the world.
But this is not the limit. In May 2011, LEGO managed to go beyond the planet. astronauts delivered designers for the International Space Station. So the case of Ole Kirk Christensen lives on.
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