Lego was born from fire and Death Rising From the Ashes to become the billion dollar company it is today on one hand the story of Lego is an inspiring story of tenacity family love and Quality Craft on the other it's a tragic tale right with controversy feuds and sorrow all these things together went into the creation of the company that makes the bricks so many of us have grown up playing with but of course Lego is so much more than toy bricks it's an Empire they have Lego world Lego games Lego movies and so much
more and the story of how that happened is absolutely insane Welcome to The Untold Truth of Lego [Music] foreign [Music] Christiansen was born in 1891 in a small village in Denmark called felsgolf he was born to a very large but very poor family however he worked hard to receive a basic high school education and began to Apprentice with his older brother as a carpenter as an apprentice Olay found a deep love for the crafts as he spent days working on and building a variety of wooden objects under the tutelage of his older brother Olay was
a hard worker and in a few years he'd saved up enough money to be able to open his own small shop in the nearby town of biland where he sold Goods he made himself by hand like tables and chairs during this time he fell in love with a woman named Christine and before too long they were married and had four kids together the family settled down in biland next to Ole's workshop with the expectation of living their modest but happy life unfortunately that would not be the case in 1924 Ole's Sons were playing with old
wood shavings in the shop when they accidentally set those shavings Ablaze the fire quickly spread throughout the building causing it along with much of the supply to go up in Flames by the time the fire was put out the shop was a pile of Ash and charcoal on the ground luckily no one in the family was hurt but the fire completely devastated the business Olay would have to rebuild the shop himself was making no money at all during that time to make matters worse the Great Depression hit Denmark in 1930 and so even once Ole's
shop was rebuilt he was still barely able to make enough money to put food on the table for his family the final straw came in 1932 when kirstine Ole's beloved wife passed away he was now broke and alone a single dad of four Sons he had no idea what to do or where to go foreign Olay came across some extra wood in his shop and used it to make some toys for his sons to play with a gift for them during these trying times he made a duck on wheels that could be pulled around with
a cord like a dog on a leash and after seeing the joy it brought his children he began to make the more toys out of the spare wood and found that not only did his kids enjoy playing with them he enjoyed making them so Olay began to make and sell toys out of his shop he refused to sacrifice the quality of his crafts and only use the finest wood he could get he also knew that his business needed a name and after much contemplation he decided on the name Lego inspired by the Danish phrase Le
got which means to play well surprisingly and completely unplanned the name also closely resembled a Latin phrase which meant I put together an omen of what was to come for the Carpenter and his fledgling toy business however at first with the economic situation in the whole country so Bleak sales were not good at all many people were just worried about buying enough food let alone buying a high quality wooden duck toy so despite olay's passion for his work he grew closer and closer to a bankruptcy as things got dire he reached out to his siblings
for Aid after much discussion they agreed they would help him get out of the hole he found himself in but on one condition he gave up making toys and went into an actually lucrative profession he had to get a real job according to his siblings even though they were offering him a financial Lifeline only refused to give up this craft that he had found himself to be so good at rather than accept their help and give up his dream he said he would figure out a way to get out of financial trouble himself so he
could continue making his beloved toys he remained focused never faltering but the world continued to conspire against him on April 9 1940 Nazi Germany invaded and took control of Denmark times went from bad to worse incredibly quickly the future was looking dark for Olay in fact one of his sons had begun to work in the shop with him and his son said he was having trouble seeing how the business could continue in a final cruel twist during the Nazi regime of Denmark Ole's carpentry store burned down for a second time Flames engulfed the store and
all of the wooden toys inside and only saw his dreams burned down right along with them on May 4th 1945 the Allies freed Denmark from the control of the Nazis was the country hadn't suffered as bad as other occupied countries the economy was still very hurt from the occupation this led Olay to search for a new cheaper material he could use to make his toys with enter the plastic injection machine during wartime Denmark along with many other countries had put a ban on the use of plastic for non-essential items which toys fell under however this
ban was lifted a couple of years after the liberation of Denmark and Olay attended a conference in Copenhagen where he got to see the machine in action and witnessed what his new material for his toys would be now there was still much debate on the validity of plastic toys as many people thought kids wouldn't want to play with cheap looking things but only could see the potential and was willing to take the risk he used what very little money he had left to buy a plastic injection machine he had found his new material and he
was ready to make plastic toys and embark on a new phase of his business only rebuilt his now twice burn store and began making plastic toys he started by making plastic teddy bears and then made a plastic tractor which he named the Ferguson tractor there were two different models someone could purchase one already constructed and one in pieces that someone could make themselves after years of struggle for Olay and Lego the tractor was a success and between the years 1951 and 1954 the company ended up selling around 100 000 Ferguson tractors thanks to olay's New
Creation things were finally looking up but things were about to get a lot crazier laughs Olay was invigorated by the success of the Ferguson truck as was his son godfred who'd become more involved with the business as the years passed on in fact he was appointed Junior manager at Lego by his father and together they brainstormed ways to elevate the company even further and that's when Olay discovered kittycraft's self-locking building bricks small plastic bricks that could be stacked together to make new models only immediately realized the potential such an idea had the self-locking build in
bricks had been patented by killercraft's owner an English businessman named Hillary Fisher page but despite the pattern Lego still released its own bricks called automatic binding Bricks now there's a lot of dispute over if Lego stole the idea from Paige and killercraft Lego claims that it had received permission to use the brick design as it saw fits but those close to page claim that the toymaker had no idea of LEGO's existence much less their usage of his design before his death in 1957. whatever the case may be Lego ended up buying the design of kittycraft's
self-locking building bricks in 1981 for 45 000 pounds in an out-of-court settlement whatever the truth may be on whether or not Lego stole kittycraft's idea what's clear is that relatively speaking they brought the rights to it very cheaply but anyway back in the 50s when Olay first discovered this brick design he and his son godfred began focusing most of their attention on these bricks as they felt they could turn them into something more at this point their business was selling a variety of different toys but godfred wanted to encourage more creativity within children his mind
word with ideas and in 1955 he had his first breakthrough Lego released the systems in play set a townscape which kids could build using Lego's automatic binding bricks and this proved to be very successful Olay was thankfully able to see the successes someone was bringing to his business before his death in 1958 godford was of course devastated by his father's passing they had become so close whilst working on the business together and he vowed to continue his father's Legacy following olay's death godfred was made CEO of Lego however soon after complaints began coming in about
the systems in playset that had been released all saying that the bricks would not stay together and anything kids bill was simply falling apart godfred worked with his team to design a way that the Lego bricks would stick together so that children could make anything they wanted but that would actually stay in position they put pipes inside the bricks and studs on top which would keep the brakes locked together as the studs and pipes were tightly wedged to one another this was the introduction of the Lego brick as we know it today with this update
to The Brick Godfrey looked to the future he wanted the bricks to work throughout time so whatever bricks they may release later would work with what they were making now he pledged that their new and improved design for the brick would never change meaning they'd work with any future kits Lego released soon after Reinventing the Lego brick Lego re-release Systems in play and began to release more sets which were all very well received the fact that the bricks could be assembled in basically any Arrangement and that they were now sturdy enough to stay in place
all meant that Lego's bricks quickly became the company's best-selling products by far the business that a few decades earlier had burned to the ground and been barely able to stay afloat was now making really good money of course you could say this success was Bill built off the back of a stolen brick design from another company but that's a bit of an oversimplification it does seem that Lego took the brick design from someone else but they also vastly improved the idea and made the product much better but either way if you thought it was all
going to be plain sailing from here think again you see even though Olay had passed away it seemed as though his bad luck lived on as another disaster was right around the corner before we get to the next chapter a quick word from today's sponsor real Alpha we've all heard about the benefits of investing in real estate but it just seems so hard to get started you normally need lots of cash up front plus endless time spent searching renovating and managing properties and with the vacation rental market valued at over 1.2 trillion dollars the everyday
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didn't stop making wooden toys in fact they began incorporating plastic components to them with the same idea of kids building toys themselves and they called this product bilofx this product was managed by godfridge Brothers called George and gerhards despite the success of the plastic toys they figured it was still nice to have woodwork involved in the company because it honored the store's humble beginnings however as is the recurring case with this family things didn't end up going as planned in 1960 their old enemy The Flame made itself known again one night a bolt of lightning
struck their Factory Burning It Down for the third time after the workshop was burnt down yet again godford made the controversial decision to stop making wooden toys and focus purely on plastic in particular they're toy bricks he felt the wooden toys must be cursed or something and they didn't sell anywhere near as well as their new plastic bricks anyway but this decision for Lego to stop producing wooden toys completely enraged his sibling since that was the part of the business they worked on and they wanted to continue godfred was the CEO though so his decision
was Final thus Carl George and Gerhart promptly quit Lego and decided to continue releasing their wooden toys under a new separate company called bile effects essentially now competing in the Toy Market against Lego with their own shop in Denmark unless the business that Olay had originally started because he wanted to make toys to keep his children happy had ended up dividing the family instead Lego had begun to rake in a lot of money and with its incredible success godfred's business ideas continue to grow and spiral into endless creativity Godfrey constructed an airport in Berlin to
help with Lego's International sales he also began to get involved in theme parks creating Legoland when Godfrey had told people he wanted to open a theme park he said he anticipated 300 000 people coming the opening year which everyone told him it was wildly unrealistic but in reality around 625 000 guests visited Legoland in its first year blowing all expectations of what the company could do out of the water the possibilities for Lego seem to endless and godfred had the creativity and ambition to match so Lego began to publish books start clothing lines and eventually
even start a video game division within its offices the company was on track to be able to accomplish anything it seemed and all the disasters of the past were beginning to seem like bad dreams on July 13 1995 Godfrey passed away but died content knowing that his and his father's business had become the success yes they always dreamed it would be thankfully he passed away right before all of those dreams Came Crashing Down when Godfrey died his son took over as the CEO of Lego meaning the family business was now on to its third generation
but it quickly became clear the company was in trouble in 1998 Lego reported its first loss in decades the truth was lots of poor financial decisions had been continuing to pile up in the background despite Lego's Amazing growth and those choices led to the destructive Financial explosion the Lego found itself in in 1998. it started when Lego's patents expired in 1978 and at the 80s opened up a long list of lawsuits and Court showings for Lego firstly a company called Taiko released some new connecting bricks very similar to Lego and Lego challenged them in court
that challenge was somewhat ironic really given that Lego themselves had been accused of stealing the brick design in the first place in fact they'd only very recently paid for the rights to it from kittycraft and so Taiko did eventually win the right to use the brick design themselves though their company never had the commercial success that Lego had experienced throughout the 90s Lego also had continual legal disputes with another Sim the company Mega Bloks which meant yet more money spent on lawsuits and lawyers those legal fees along with the amusement parks Video Games books and
so many other endeavors that have been taken on by the company continue to drag money away from Lego at a higher rate than they were making it their expansion into so many Avenues had become a little too chaotic and finally in 1998 Lego announced their first major loss they were forced to fire 1 000 of their 10 000 employees the company was just stretched too thin and locked into a downward death spiral it was so bad that in 2004 Lego reported that it had lost hundreds of millions of dollars in that year alone [Music] foreign
disaster godfred's son sat down a CEO and appointed the first non-family CEO of the company Jurgen vign with the obvious goal of turning what had become a financial nightmare back into a success story there was a lot of work to do and a lot of failed Ventures that needed to be turned into successes firstly Jurgen began working on different merchandising efforts and selling off what wasn't making the company money was keeping what was he discontinued products that the company had no experience in and focused on what it did best he also focused on the rising
success of video games and DoubleDown on licensing their product to other popular brands from Star Wars to Winnie the Pooh which helped boost sales massively by attaching Lego to other popular franchises soon the changes began to make the company's finances look a lot healthier Jurgen was just 35 unappointed as CEO of the company and in no time at all he'd had a hugely positive impact whilst much of his work involved reducing the amount of new business ventures Lego took on there was one new Avenue that Lego embarked on and surprisingly that was movies as they
released the Lego movie in 2014 team even more surprisingly the movie was a massive hit grossing a little under 500 million dollars on top of the movie's massive success jorgen's efforts continued to rapidly grow the revenue for the company and turn its financial situation around as of today the company has been experiencing double-digit percentage profit growths something almost unheard of in the toy industry and so you see from a small Workshop run by a stubborn Carpenter experiencing hardship after hardship to a multi-billion dollar Global Empire Lego success is nothing short of spectacular Ole started with
nothing but his willpower his love for carpentry and his joy of making his sons happy with the toys he made and it was the Journey To Success was an extremely bumpy ride spanning multiple Generations Ole's Relentless determination laid the foundations for what Lego has now become you'd think if your business burns down three times that would be a sign to stop but in true Lego fashion the family just kept rebuilding it however there is another company with an even crazier story that I think you'll like and that is the history of Nike which you can
watch right now by clicking the thumbnail screen I'll hopefully see you there in a second cheers
