The humble LEGO brick is having a moment, its resurgence coinciding with a government push to get children off their devices<\/p>\n
LEGO defies the market odds, builds a profit <\/p>\n
Brick by brick, LEGO has built a comeback in New Zealand and is now bucking retail trends, with revenue doubling over the past decade.<\/p>\n
The brand, which dates back to 1932 and was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2003, is proving that in a world of screens, its humble old-fashioned plastic toy can still hold its own.<\/p>\n
It is worth noting that the company is addressing the plastic aspect, with 52 percent of the materials used last year coming from renewable or recycled sources.<\/p>\n
“It seems to buck fashion, doesn’t it?” RNZ business reporter Jeffrey Halley tells The Detail. “We’re living in the age of tablets and devices and AI… yet LEGO is still here.”<\/p>\n
And with the National Party now pushing for less screen time for kids, could LEGO be the answer to getting Kiwi students to put down their devices and start creating again?<\/p>\n
The bricks arrived in New Zealand more than 60 years ago and quickly became a hit.<\/p>\n
But by the 1990s, LEGO’s popularity declined globally, and by 2003 it was in financial trouble.<\/p>\n
The cancellation of some controversial sets – including a dynamite factory with crook minifigures robbing it – didn’t help.<\/p>\n
But the company has made an extraordinary comeback, which includes a smash-hit LEGO movie franchise and best-selling sets designed to appeal to an adult audience.<\/p>\n
New Zealand’s own market has grown for more than 20 straight years.<\/p>\n
“Premium brands – they’re sort of recession-proof. They transcend economic cycles. And Lego is one of those brands,” Halley says.<\/p>\n
“They haven’t stood still. They’ve evolved their brand and their product offering.”<\/p>\n
In its latest New Zealand filings, the company reported total revenue of $80.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2025, up 8.7 percent from $73.9m in 2024.<\/p>\n
“It turned over, I think, about $33m back in 2015, and in the latest accounts, it turned over just over $80m, but it actually only made a profit of $2.1m. That’s only a 2.6 percent profit margin,” Halley says.<\/p>\n
“That seems to me very low for what I would consider to be a premium, lower volume brand. You would expect those profit margins to be much, much higher.”<\/p>\n
But that net profit of $2.1m is up from $1.7m the year prior.<\/p>\n
This week it was also reported in NZ that Australian private equity firm Kennedy Consolidated has acquired LEGO’s Australian and New Zealand certified stores for A$65m ($80.89m). Halley describes the move as “intriguing” and suspects the new owners will be looking to build more LEGO stores here.<\/p>\n
“The power isn’t really in the brick itself – it’s what the child gets to do with it,” says clinical psychologist Dr Camilla Nguyen, who works with New Zealand LEGO to provide free sets to schools here, promoting the Learning to Play and Social Skills programme.<\/p>\n
“It allows the child to imagine, make choices, experiment, solve problems, connect with other people, and try again and create something meaningful to them. And that is something that I still have with me now as an adult when playing and building LEGO bricks.”<\/p>\n
Nguyen has been an ardent LEGO fan since she was a child.<\/p>\n
“My upbringing is that I’m a boat refugee,” she tells The Detail. “I moved to Sweden, and I didn’t speak the language at all. But it was something magical being introduced to bricks, and having LEGO and the bricks do the communication between me and my friend.<\/p>\n
“It was a lot of learning through play, but also a lot of building social bridges that were so important at that age for me.”<\/p>\n
She now actively encourages Kiwi kids to play with LEGO.<\/p>\n
“So when a child is building with LEGO, there’s actually an enormous amount going on cognitively. They might be holding an idea in their mind, planning what they’re going to do, searching for the right pieces, manipulating objects in space, and then noticing when something hasn’t worked and changing their approach.<\/p>\n
“So you’re bringing together things like spatial reasoning, working memory, planning, problem solving, and cognitive flexibility.”<\/p>\n