Lego in Asia: Who dares, plays; A toymaker taps into a new market for selling to pussycat mums

Lego in Asia: Who dares, plays; A toymaker taps into a new market for selling to pussycat mums

Nov 16th 2013 | SINGAPORE |From the print edition

SQUEEZED between the boutique cafés and posh handbag shops in a Singapore shopping mall, Joey Tan is offering something very different, even radical, to the city-state’s consumers: play. Her shop, a franchise of “bricks4kids”, is selling classes for children to play with Lego bricks, and her idea is clearly taking off.Her initial outlet, the first in South-East Asia for the American franchiser, opened only in January, but already Ms Tan has opened two more and has several others in the pipeline. She has been invited to give Lego classes in schools, and has been prepping potential bricks4kids franchisees from elsewhere in the region.

Ms Tan says that she had to overcome some scepticism at first. After all, she lives in the homeland of the “tiger mum”. Asking parents to pay extra for their kids to learn to play with coloured bricks flies in the face of some deeply held values. Singapore’s children, like those in Asia’s other aspirational societies, are often whisked off after school to yet more classes—in music, maths, anything traditional and serious-sounding—to keep them away from play, synonymous in their parents’ minds with idleness and failing exams.

Yet Ms Tan had a hunch that for a younger generation of parents, born in the 1980s, those prejudices in favour of piano-bashing and rote learning might be waning. She believes that these younger pussycat mums might instead appreciate their children learning the creativity, teamwork and problem-solving that, she argues, come from playing with Lego.

The Danish firm that makes the coloured bricks certainly agrees with her. Lego has been enjoying extraordinary growth in Asia, much more so than in the rest of the world. Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, its chief executive, attributes this success directly to the well-documented rise of an Asian middle class (who can afford such a relatively expensive toy) coupled with a new-found willingness of these parents to let their children learn through play.

All the bricks in China

After a strong 2012, Lego’s sales to Asian consumers have risen by 35% so far this year, outperforming the Asian toy market by a factor of five. Sales have grown by 70% in China, 35% in South Korea and 20% in Singapore. The company will start building its first factory in China next year. Anything associated with Lego seems to flourish in Asia at the moment. The year-old Legoland theme park in Malaysia, just across the border with Singapore, is Asia’s first. Run by Merlin, an entertainment group which floated successfully on the London stockmarket on November 8th, it has already had 1m visitors.

James Button of SmithStreet, a business consultancy in Shanghai, says Lego has found a receptive audience among some Asian governments, which agree with pussycat mums that traditional Asian education techniques do not foster the creativity and independent thinking that are increasingly needed in the modern global economy. The firm has teamed up with the Chinese government to open officially sponsored after-school Lego centres. There are now 20 of these in China, and over 100 in South Korea.

The lesson for toymakers is that in the Asian market fun alone may not be enough if they are to persuade parents to buy their products. Lego, Mr Button points out, is cleverly “straddling the line between education and play”. And that appeals to governments and mothers, as well as to children.