LEGO Pulls Ahead of Mattel at 2014 Half-Year Revenue Race
“Denmark’s Lego A/S said Thursday that revenue in the first six months rose 11% boosted by “The Lego Movie” products, making it the biggest toy company in the world both in terms of revenue and profit ahead of Barbie-maker Mattel Inc.
First-half Lego revenue rose 11%, to 11.5 billion Danish kroner ($2.01 billion) from 10.4 billion kroner during the same period last year, the company reported.
That’s just above the $2 billion in net sales Mattel reported for the first half of 2014.”
Profits wise is not close – LEGO stands at $477 million – Mattel is around $17 million for 2014.
Mattel should close out 2014 with about $6.9 BILLION in sales so that’s what LEGO is aiming for to be the #1 Toy Maker in the world … if LEGO beats out Mattel, it will probably be the first time since the early 1970’s that they’re not #1. Since Barbie has been around 1959 and it was pretty much an out of the box hit – it probably wasn’t long before they were the largest toy company in America and then the world by the 1960’s? Marx Toys or Fisher Price was the largest toy company until the 1960’s* … When Mattel had their second massive hit with Hot Wheels in the late 1960’s, that pretty much sealed the deal as the #1 toy company in the world …
*(Whammo?)
You can read more at the USA Today or The Wire.
5 September 2014
6 Comments
I am in no way surprised by this. LEGO does essentially one thing and does it very well. (Plus, they’ve acknowledged and admit their mistakes of the past and learned from them.) LEGO is universally loved. Compare and contrast to Mattel. Mattel will produce any old hunk of junk under any licence they can get their mitts on. No toy is too cheap or flash-in-the-pan. When I buy LEGO, it’s an investment. When I buy toys produced by Mattel, I consider it an expense. (Diecast Cars might be the only exception.) Most of the rest of it comes with an expectation on my part that it will be a throwaway within a couple of years. The same cannot be said for LEGO. It’s practically indestructible. I still find bricks that were buried outside in my backyard by kids who lived here 15 years ago.
I found at least one reference that listed Hasbro (and all its subsidiaries) as the largest in 1984, but who knows how accurate that is. Tracing corporate take-overs of toy lines is exasperating at best, futile at worst.
LEGO Group still owns 30% of LEGOLand. Even if LEGO Group had sold all interest in the LEGOLand parks, they would still have significant merchandise sales and licensing fees at the parks worldwide (they still own the trademarks to LEGOLand, the minifig, the brick design, LEGO logo etc)
From Wikipedia –
In June 2005, a 70 percent stake in the Legoland theme parks was sold to Blackstone Group of New York, an investment and advisory firm, under its Merlin Entertainments brand. Lego Group retains a 30 percent stake.
Citation: Kinsman, Michael (14 July 2005). “Control of Legoland parks sold”. The San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved 2012-05-03 l.
Only if it has a giant castle grayskull in the middle of it.
Maybe Mattel needs to build some theme parks?
Lego sold off the theme parks, but yeah they help to promote their products. I think the minifigs and the movie helped them out a lot!