Denmark's Godtfred Kirk Christian sen, 47,
is fond of remarking that even the best is none too good for children,
and he should know what he is talking about: the worldwide success of
his Lego toymaking business has all the ingredients of a modern-day
Hans Chris tian Andersen fairy tale. An anomaly among internationally
minded Danish executives, Christiansen speaks no for eign languages,
bases his family-owned enterprise not in Copenhagen but in the remote
Jutland village of Billund . Nonetheless, his
up-from-nothing business has annual sales of more than $30 million, now
accounts for almost a penny of every dollar of Danish exports.Touring Western Europe this month for a peek at pre-Christmas toy sales,
Christiansen pronounced himself “sat isfied” — as well he
might have been.Despite recessions in several countries, Lego's holiday sales on the
Continent were running up to 20% ahead of last year's pace. What makes
that perform ance all the more impressive is the fact that Lego thrives
in the fad-ridden toy industry with just one main product line:
construction kits consisting of interlocking, precision-molded plastic
blocks that can be fashioned into almost any shape or mosaiclike
pattern.Cheese Merchant's Daughter. Christiansen business got its start in
Billund during the early 1930s when his father, a carpenter unable to
find work in the depressed village, began making wooden toys in his
workshop. Naming his enterprise Lego, a contraction for the Danish leg
godt , Ole Kirk Christiansen peddled his toys by
bicycling about in the surrounding countryside. When Godtfred reached
14 he dropped out of the village school to join his father, after World
War II helped swing Lego into the manufacture of plastic toy animals.Taking an increasingly bigger role in the business, Godtfred soon got
the idea of producing a line of construction toys that figured to
appeal to girls as well as boys; he devised gaily colored plastic
blocks to fit the bill, and production began on them in 1952. Once the
blocks caught on, children naturally needed more and more sets to
expand their construction possibilities —and the business grew apace.
By 1960 , the product was doing so
well that Lego dropped its production of wooden toys.A quiet but intense man who married the daughter of the cheese merchant
in a neighboring village, Godtfred Christiansen today runs his business
in a complex of modern buildings that he has put up around his father's
old workshop. With little formal education, he reads so haltingly that
he prefers to have aides deliver reports orally—but he makes up for
all that with a sharp business mind. To market his product in Europe,
for example, Christiansen shunned toy wholesalers to set up his own
network of 13 sales branches. He explains: “We would have disappeared
in the multitude of competitors if we had placed ourselves in the hands
of wholesalers.”^ Saarinen's Models. In the U.S. and Canada, Lego's line is turned out
under a licensing agreement with luggage-building Samsonite Corp.,
whose Legosales—now some $8,000,000 a year
