Now, adults are simply as enthusiastic collectors of the Danish firm’s colourful brick units—and Lego is banking on them to develop.
The pattern began when Lego-loving youngsters took their fascination into maturity, and continued to purchase the model’s elaborate collections.
“We decided to focus on adults because we realized that we had a much bigger opportunity than we were tapping into,” Julia Goldin, Lego’s chief product and advertising officer, informed the Wall Street Journal.
In 2020, Lego launched its adult-focussed class which boasts large (and dearer) units. Suppose Harry Potter’s Gringotts building, $700 Titanic replicas, and a $500 set of a city from The Lord of the Rings.
Adults, who in any other case felt embarrassed to purchase Lego for themselves have since gravitated in the direction of the model with its new “18+” labeling, Lego stated.
In about 4 years, Lego’s assortment for grown-ups has expanded to 142 units—roughly 15% of the whole units out there within the U.S. It’s unclear what number of of Lego’s shoppers are adults.
Certainly, grownup collectors have turn into essential to the expansion of the toy business, which faces the specter of inflation and better rates of interest curbing folks’s discretionary spending. The “kidult” section, for these aged 12 and above, has outpaced the youngsters’s class inside toys, based on information intelligence group Circana.
Between 2019 and 2022, kidults’ contribution to the toy section by gross sales has flourished from 23.4% to twenty-eight%. Their marketplace for toys is now valued at €4.6 billion ($4.9 billion) throughout the U.Ok., France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
“The kidults market has been outpacing the kids core part of the industry for a very long time,” stated Circana’s international toys business analyst Frédérique Tutt in a May report. “I believe there are still plenty of growth opportunities that brands, license owners and retailers can capture to grow this market much further.”
This chance bodes properly for Lego, which already has a powerful grownup fan base because the dynamics of the toy business skew extra in the direction of older gamers who seemingly have increased buying energy.
The Denmark-based Lego’s grownup collectors appeared to have helped it outperform the broader toy business in 2023.
Lego’s revenues grew 2% final 12 months, towards an business that shrunk 7%, notching $9.7 billion. Whereas that’s the slowest gross sales development the corporate has witnessed in seven years, it additionally factors to how Lego was in a position to buck a pattern that its different rivals struggled with.
However Lego believes its youngsters are simply as necessary, even when the scales of the toy business could also be tipping in favor of the “kidults.”
“Kids and learning through play will always be our focus and our ambition is to bring LEGO play to more children. Adults are important because they introduce children to LEGO building and they enjoy building together,” a Lego spokesperson informed Fortune.
Lego’s adult-collector market may assist the corporate even by way of 2024 as financial pressures proceed to weigh on shopper’s buying choices. Perhaps it’s only a query of discovering the right Lego Icons for them.
