Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things fall victim to uncontrollable forces.
Lego Group, whose iconic plastic building blocks have entertained millions of children for more than 70 years, said Tuesday it will shed 1,200 jobs to remold itself in an era when kids prefer playing with electronic gadgets.
The automobile put the carriage companies out of business. Gasoline and the electric light put the Kerosene lamp manufacturers out of business. Stuff happens, I know. I lost a career due to consolidation and technology. And understanding why it happened doesn't make it any easier.
The Denmark-based company, which is one of the last to produce toys in the United States, plans to close its U.S. manufacturing plant and lay off 300 people there in early 2007. About 900 employees in Denmark also will be sacked over the next three years.
The reasons are significant.
Sales of traditional toys fell 4 percent to $21.3 billion in 2005, down from $22.1 billion in 2004, according to the NPD Group Inc., a market research firm in Port Washington, N.Y.
According to the article, as children move quicker from kids toys to electronic gadgets like cell phones and ipods, toy manufacturers take it on the chin.
Poduction will be moved from Enfield, Conn., to Mexico, where costs are lower, the group said in a statement.
Other international moves are designed to save money, to compete with lower-cost competitors. Production of the traditional Lego brick will now be handled by Flextronics, a Singapore-based electronics manufacturer. Some of its production and distribution centers were moved to the Czech Republic, and there still may be more possible moves to China.
The times they are a changin'.
By the way, just in case you wanted to know, Lego, which began with carved wooded toys in 1932, got its name by combining the first two letters of the Danish words “Leg godt” (play well). In Latin, the word means “I assemble.”
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