Hellego! This week has been a very exciting week! The Lego Group did their annual press conference for 2014 and it was nothing but good news!
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| Used by permission,® 2015 The LEGO Group |
The 30 minute press conference started with Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO of the Lego group, dancing while signing to The Lego Movie's Everything Is Awesome theme song. He was very excited to share with us the achievements of the Lego Group in 2014.
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| Used by permission,® 2015 The LEGO Group |
He started talking a bit about their philosophy and how play is one of the most important elements in a child's development. They discussed the importance of play with the quote from Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, the founder of the Lego group: "Our idea has been to create a toy that prepares the child for life - appealing to its imagination and developing the creative urge and joy of creation that are the driving forces in every human being." Next, every person attending was given a bag containing six Lego bricks and was asked to build a duck in 40 seconds. Once they were done, they were asked to compare the ducks with their neighbours. The goal was to see how Lego bricks can be combined in an infinite number of ways.
After this introduction, Mr. Thompson, representing The Lego Foundation which collects 25% of The Lego Group's income to research the value of play, talked about what happened inside the attendee's brain while they were building their duck.
The conference moved on to the presentation of The Lego Group's achievements in 2014. "This was another successful year for The Lego Group. It is our tenth consecutive year of growth." says Jorgen. This is very hard and unique for a company to have. With that, we already know that our favourite company is doing very well. The first achievement Jorgen presented was how The Lego Group is continuing to globalise their business. In 2014 they have gained 900 new employees and built two new offices in Shanghai and London. Jorgen stated that 2014 was a record year in terms of investments with a 17% increase. In 2014, The Lego Group has built and expanded production facilities, notably a new one in Mexico and invested a lot in their Denmark facility.
Jorgen moved on to the amount of children around the world they were able to reach. They estimated that in 2014 they reached over 85,000,000 children, reaching 400,000 with The Lego Foundation and engaging with 10,000,000 children though Lego Education.
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| Used by permission,® 2015 The LEGO Group |
Jorgen moved on to talking about The Lego Group's responsibility in 2014. If you've been following the blog this year, you're probably aware of some of the environmental changes The Lego Group made. For the fifth consecutive year, The Lego Group has had zero product recalls. They have introduced a more sustainable packaging and partnered with the World Wildlife Fund. They have also had full certification of the FSC for their cardboard and have seen their first production line based on their new windfarm energy. Finally, in 2014, The Lego Group has signed a partnership with unicef. Jorgen concluded by calling out three elements from the responsibility report. First off, The Lego Group reported a very high net promoters score with a very high increase in 2014. This means Lego consumers are talking very positively about The Lego Group. Secondly, Jorgen said that Lego continues to have "a record high level of employee engagement, motivation and satisfaction." Finally, Lego asked retailers globally how satisfied they were doing business with The Lego Group. More than 90% are responding and giving a very positive score.
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| Used by permission,® 2015 The LEGO Group |
Jorgen moved on to presenting his partner, John Goodwin, the Chief Financial Officer to talk about the financial results.
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| Used by permission,® 2015 The LEGO Group |
John revealed to us "in true oscar style" that The Lego Group had a growth of 15%. "In Lego speak that is awesome," said Goodwin. He continued on saying that "2014 was a highly successful year." He said that their traditional lines like Lego City, Creator and Technic did extremely well. He continued to say that the newer lines like Lego Friends and Lego Super Heroes also had a very big growth. He also said that The Lego Group has had tremendous success with The Lego Movie line of products when the movie was launched in February. He continued by saying that all three of their regions grew double digits during 2014. This was succeeded with the lunch of over 300 products this year.
John concluded with the financial results presenting the operating profit margin which was 33.9%. This gave a total profit of over 7 billion Danish Krones which is the equivalent of over 1,310,862,700$
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| Used by permission,® 2015 The LEGO Group |
That is what concluded the conference. A few fun Lego facts in 2014 is how The Lego Group manufactured over 60,000,000,000 elements, produced over 500,000,000 minifigures, had over 650,000,000 Lego tyres produced and had a total of 3500 unique Lego elements.
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| Used by permission,® 2015 The LEGO Group |
This concludes the 2014 annual press conference by The Lego Group. You can view the entire press conference in the embedded player below:
This was one of the best Lego press conferences yet. There was so much exciting and positive news during this conference. It's great to know that literally everything is awesome at our favourite company and that Lego is up there in the top companies. What do you think of all this information and numbers? Does it surprise you? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section!
