Ole Kirk Christiansen, who established his workshop in Billund in Denmark in 1932, made wooden furniture and toys. His business wasn’t particularly profitable, and he struggled through the first 30 years. In 1934, he began to focus on toys, and changed the name of the business to LEGO. This is a contraction of “leg godt”, the Danish word for “play well”.
In the 1960s, the company grew to other Nordic countries. The company also created a smaller brick that was perfect for hands with small hands, and named it DUPLO after the Latin word duplex (two-fold). This allowed children to make more elaborate models.
In the 1970s, Lego began to introduce new features that would help its products differentiate themselves from the competition. They introduced different faces to the minifigures. This made the minifigures appear more realistic and enabled them to express various expressions and emotions. The Lego Group also added wheels to its bricks, opening the possibility of building vehicles and other machines that moved.
The next major step was to introduce dedicated themes systems within the systems that allowed users to create a specific world or situation. This helped the company increase its brand’s recognition and helped them draw an increasingly younger audience. Additionally the company increased its production by opening factories in South Korea, Malaysia, and Brazil.
