Subject:
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Re: TLG investigation 1st answers
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Fri, 19 Feb 1999 20:16:12 GMT
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Viewed:
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938 times
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Kaere Jeroen,
So I start another novel.
I am not at all surprised by the number of responses to your initial
inquiry. Its a bit like opening Pandora's box. Many (adults)
in the online community feel that TLG pretty much ignores them, rightly
or wrongly, a subject I will touch on later.
In your last post about the answers you received, I noticed several
things. First, your reply was focused mostly on the answers
to only one of your original questions. I suspect most of our replies
were not on the subject you had expected/wished?
Your original questions were:
How many of those clubs exist?
Are they real-life based or virtual (internet) based?
How big are the clubs?
And more important:
What could Lego do to help you?
Would an official Lego certificate give extra value, even if it would
mean
that you would loose some of your freedom (Lego has to protect his/her
image)?
As your question about "what Lego could do to help" was surrounded by
club-related questions, it was my impression that you
were primarily interested in feedback on the subject of Lego-related
clubs, and the nature of support (help) that "we" desire
from Lego as aid to such clubs. Was this the case or not? Like it or
not, what you got back was a more general discussion of
what Lego should/needs to do, etc.
You state:
So far I have summarized your reactions in a couple of categories:
- Acknowledgment of the AFOL-community by the Lego group
- Re-releases of old sets
- Bulk piece ordering and/or better service packs
- Better set designs by Lego
I will address these issues from your reply first, and then return to
what I thought was your original topic of fostering Lego
Clubs. You have received and summarized above what I consider to be the
best feedback I have ever seen from this group.
Whether it is valid or applicable is for TLG to decide.
Like it or not, any long lived product-based company will have "old
timers" or veteran customers around from "the good old
days" and will always remember them fondly. This phenomenon will only
accelerate as (at least in the US) the average age of
the population increases. TLG would be wise to recognize this in their
long-term planning. By analogy, TLG and automobile
companies have many similarities. They both bring out new products
every year based largely on previous ones. As they age,
customers generally progress from basic, cheaper products, through
mid-range ones, to the more elaborate and expensive
ones. Another similarity is that car companies do not go back and make
another production run of 1957 Chevy convertibles or
1963 Corvettes, just because a group of old customers, "that grew up
with them/wish they had never sold it", now want them
again. That covers the - Re-releases of old sets topic. Get over it
guys! Nostalgia is fine for those who live in the past.
At the same time, it is generally an unwise business practice to
ignore/alienate a significant customer group. This is related to
your point that Lego develops for kids, not for adults. This is only
partially true. Lego should develop and sell products their
customers want. I shouldn't have to remind you that Lego is purchased
mainly by adults for their or other children. (This group
excepted as we buy it for ourselves.) If you attended any of the 25th
US anniversary tour stops, I would say that the ratio was
about 60-40, kids outnumbering adults. And the adults were having as
good a time as the kids.
For many years, TLG has enjoyed one of the best product/brand
reputations, with global product visibility and customer
awareness of any company, toy or not, in the world. As a result, Lego
customers have high expectations of quality,
inventiveness, and both educational and play value WRT Lego. These
expectations are based on their own experience with it,
also fostered in large part by TLG itself. If TLG's products are
perceived by parents, or worse children, as: less interesting, of
lower quality, or otherwise inferior to last year's sets, or the sets
the parents had when they were young, etc., TLG is in
trouble. This is what I think happened lately with what is known as
"Town Jr."
While it is hard to maintain excellent customer opinion/perception of a
product/company, it is nearly impossible to recover it
once it is lost. If you continue to stumble, in the long run
competition will solve the problem for you. I know it is also difficult
to
maintain a continuous product improvement process when the nature of the
product is innovative/very flexible to begin with.
The critical factor is to rotate and add new product designers, and
incorporate valid customer feedback.
I think that TLG's 2-3 year product theme life cycle is too short by at
least a year. It is hard to continue to conceive/produce
original themes on that schedule. Very few recent themes have caught my
8 year old son's (or my) fancy immediately, with the
exception of Adventurers. Some themes should always be just starting,
while others are mature. And, you will always get the
broad generalizations like "the old space sets were much better than the
new Islanders sets" etc. comments. A good analogy
here is Disneyland/ Disneyworld. There is no disputing their long
success "mining" only a few truly timeless themes that they
update continuously. Again as I described above, the parents want their
children to enjoy a similar, if not the exact same
experience they had when they went to Disneyland with their parents 20
years ago. The same desire extends to Lego. Lego
has obviously learned from their success with about a theme for each
Disney "Land": Frontier/Wild West, Adventure,
Tomorrow/space, Pirates/History, and to a lesser extent Fantasy (time
cruisers?not really) though still no Lego theme for
Cartoons and World culture (Epcot). (I'd like that one!) The summary of
all of this is that I completely agree with you that from
TLG's business perspective, It would be better to increase the appeal of
new sets, than to rerelease old sets, but note the
reliance/relationship here to product improvement and customer feedback.
This brings me back to an original question of your investigation.:
What could Lego do to help you?
How about replies in the context of Lego clubs this time guys! Clubs are
a good place to get feedback, be they online or
physical clubs. Comments in the categories of:
- Acknowledgment of the AFOL-community by the Lego group
- Bulk piece ordering and/or better service packs
It would be nice if TLG had some acknowledgment of AFOL, and of Lego
clubs in general, but it is not essential to the survival
or evolution of either type of group. While TLG interest and support
would benefit the clubs, TLG would get better feedback
and product ideas etc. Based on your product targeting comments, "Lego
develops for kids, not for adults" it sounds as if
the clubs of interest to TLG would be kid focused. This is not
necessarily consistent with "Acknowledgment of the
AFOL-community by the Lego group" What does TLG want out of the clubs?
I think it is likely that only serious Lego maniacs and schools, for
projects, etc. would be interested in bulk brick orders. These
people are the ones who will be in the clubs, be they children or
adults. If you want feedback from people in clubs, let them
buy bulk bricks through shop at home, etc. Bulk packs would be a waste
of valuable space in retail stores.
I'm sure there will be no feedback at all on this short post.
Have a nice weekend,
Mark
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: TLG investigation 1st answers
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| (...) Um, Nissan/Datsun 240ZX ;-) Nissan is buying all the originals they can find, and rebuilding them and selling them. They have to buy old ones to rebuild because too many of the molds/stamps are GONE. I don't think TLG would have that problem. (...) (26 years ago, 19-Feb-99, to lugnet.general)
| | | Re: TLG investigation 1st answers
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| (...) Yes, and before someone writes this off as "the adults were there with their kids".... UH-UH. I HAVE no kids, and quite a few BA TLGers were there without kids. I'm sure there were others there without kids that weren't with the BA TLGer (...) (26 years ago, 19-Feb-99, to lugnet.general)
| | | Re: TLG investigation 1st answers
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| [This followup was posted to lugnet.general and a copy was sent to the cited author.] Hello Jeroen! Many of the things that I would desire/like to see from TLG have been stated by many in the community, and far more eloquently than I could ever hope (...) (26 years ago, 20-Feb-99, to lugnet.general)
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