Innovation

Going beyond the brick

Clicking with customers: the challenge of selling Lego in Africa.

15 September 2020

No matter if you’re a hobbyist or collector, parent or teacher, Lego embodies the principles of a toy that everyone is after: quality, creativity and educational. But the business of selling Lego when your children (or grandchildren) are the first generation to experience it is another story altogether.

“Africa is, on the one side, a very developed market for Lego, but, on the other side, it’s very much an emerging market and this has to do with history. You can find people in their 60s who grew up with Lego and others who grew up with no toys at all – their kids or grandchildren are the first generation to play with Lego. It’s interesting, but also a big task for us to take everyone along because not everybody understands the concept of Lego. We’ve had people returning a Lego set to a store saying, ‘I’ve bought a vehicle, I unpacked it and it was broken!’” says Kristian Imhof, Lego Group’s country manager, South Africa and Sub-Sahara.

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