LEGO explains delayed launch of summer sets in North America

The LEGO Group has explained why its summer range of new sets typically launches later in North America than in the UK and Europe.

If you were down at your local LEGO Store on June 1 hoping to grab new City or Technic sets, you’ll have walked away disappointed – if you’re in the US, that is. The latest waves from both those in-house themes, as well as a handful of other sets, launched at the beginning of this month in the UK and Europe. But they won’t actually be available across the pond until August 1.

That’s not a new phenomenon for the LEGO Group. As data published by Brickset in 2020 shows, the gulf between summer release dates has existed for a good while, forcing North American shoppers to play the waiting game for products that have long been available on the other side of the world. So it’s not a surprise that it’s happening again in 2023, but the question remains: why is it happening at all?

According to a spokesperson for the LEGO Group (via the LEGO Ambassador Network), the delayed launch is actually caused by wider industry trends. In the UK and Europe, retailers prefer to refresh their product assortments in January and June. But in the US, that stock rotation now takes place in January and August, as a direct consequence of consumer feedback.

When new products arrived on shelves in June, they were apparently already old news by Christmas – so shoppers were less inclined to buy them. But when stores refresh their assortments in August or September, the products are still perceived as new by the time the holiday season rolls around. That means it’s not only the LEGO Group that elects to wait until later in the summer to launch new stuff.

Of course, those consumers clued into the LEGO Group’s wider product catalogue will already have spent months looking at the sets in other regions before they’re released in the US, which sort of defeats the purpose. But this strategy presumably isn’t intended for those fans: rather, it seems tailored for more casual buyers, who are less likely to know what’s coming out over the next three to six months.

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This wider industry trend is also cited in several studies on the effects and benefits of assortment rotation, including a 2010 report from the University of California. The paper identifies a connection between assortment rotation, prices and sales, suggesting that consumers will spend more money at stores that ‘renew their assortment at a faster pace’.

While that study focuses specifically on fast fashion brands like Zara and H&M, which benefit from flexible supply chains and reduced development times, it’s not difficult to see the LEGO Group taking the same approach. New products land on shelves every single month, and even its major winter wave is now split between January and March. Launching summer sets later in the US is effectively an extension of that ethos, because those products will still feel new and refreshed come Christmas.

The end result, of course, is that those stateside are left playing the waiting game for certain LEGO summer 2023 sets. The good news is that the majority of the June 2023 launches are actually available now in North America, including new sets from Harry Potter, Friends, NINJAGO, Monkie Kid, Disney, Batman and more.

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