History
In 1932, a man named Ole Kirk Kristiansen had an idea where you can take little rectangular pieces and connect them to the top and bottom of each other to construct little buildings or anything your mind can think of. Kristiansen soon established his business in the small town of Billund, Denmark. He then quickly got 6-7 employees to work for him and create the toy called, LEGO.
After realizing that costumers are enjoying the LEGO business, in 1939 Kristiansen decided he needed to have a factory to improve the speed of building the toys and in 1948, the company had reached 50 employees. As the company kept on growing rapidly, more and more people heard about the toy and soon enough, in 1966, LEGO's were being sold to 42 countries. Just two years later on June 7th, 1968, the first LEGOLAND was built which attracted 625,000 visitors in just the first season! This was a huge turning point for the business because now everyone was excited to hear about LEGO's.
If you think about it, LEGO is such an interesting name so a lot of people might ask, how did they come about naming this product? Well it is simple, the product used to be called "LEg GOdt" (Danish) which actually means "play well" in Danish. Once the product soon became a big success and began to grow, people came to realize that this word means "I put together" in Latin. So it is simple as that, LEGO means, "I put together," who would have thought?
After 80 years, LEGO is now the fifth largest toy manufacturer in the world in terms of sales and is still getting bigger! Also, there are currently more than 7,000 employees and still increasing. LEGO will always be a toy company that will sell millions of toys because there are so many different ideas and fun pieces that LEGO will keep on producing in the upcoming years.
After realizing that costumers are enjoying the LEGO business, in 1939 Kristiansen decided he needed to have a factory to improve the speed of building the toys and in 1948, the company had reached 50 employees. As the company kept on growing rapidly, more and more people heard about the toy and soon enough, in 1966, LEGO's were being sold to 42 countries. Just two years later on June 7th, 1968, the first LEGOLAND was built which attracted 625,000 visitors in just the first season! This was a huge turning point for the business because now everyone was excited to hear about LEGO's.
If you think about it, LEGO is such an interesting name so a lot of people might ask, how did they come about naming this product? Well it is simple, the product used to be called "LEg GOdt" (Danish) which actually means "play well" in Danish. Once the product soon became a big success and began to grow, people came to realize that this word means "I put together" in Latin. So it is simple as that, LEGO means, "I put together," who would have thought?
After 80 years, LEGO is now the fifth largest toy manufacturer in the world in terms of sales and is still getting bigger! Also, there are currently more than 7,000 employees and still increasing. LEGO will always be a toy company that will sell millions of toys because there are so many different ideas and fun pieces that LEGO will keep on producing in the upcoming years.