LEGO says its stores are not about sales: ‘There’s no wish to control retail’

The LEGO Group continues to open new brand stores at a rapid rate, but the company’s CEO says they’re not intended to increase sales – and that there’s ‘no wish to control retail’.

A total of 147 new LEGO Stores opened their doors for the first time in 2023, bringing the number of branded stores up to 1,031 worldwide. That’s a major milestone for the LEGO Group, but CEO Niels B. Christiansen says the intention behind opening so many stores is not to diminish the presence of its retail partners or take away from their sales.

Instead, these more than 1,000 stores are actually viewed as a brand building exercise. “The reason that we [are opening] more branded stores in general is really to have a place to showcase the brand and allow consumers to get into the brand,” Christiansen said during a presentation of the company’s financial results for 2023. “It is less of a transaction type thing for us.”

The CEO noted that building brand awareness will hopefully have a knock-on effect for the LEGO Group’s retail partners. Those include the likes of John Lewis, Zavvi and GAME in the UK, and Walmart, Barnes & Noble and Target in the US – retailers that typically offer discounts on LEGO sets, and so can provide a more attractive prospect for LEGO fans than official brand stores.

“We are so happy that we are growing with all our partners, all the different retail channels everywhere in the world, and that we’ve done that over a long period of years,” Christiansen added. “So that’s the important retail channel for us. But we are just so aware of the importance of the LEGO brand and the opportunity to allow fans and consumers to experience that.

“That’s why there’s typically a queue outside a flagship store in a city on a Saturday morning. That’s the experience we would like to give fans and consumers, and when they get that I think they will actually make purchases or transactions in many different [channels], and hopefully our partners’ channels. So there’s no wish to control retail – there is really a wish to control brand and develop brand.”

The LEGO Group continued to grow revenue and sales at a slower rate in 2023, amid a wider cost-of-living crisis and a particularly challenging economic climate in China, which was previously one of the company’s strongest growth markets. You can read more about its financial performance here.

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