Bitcoin News Australia

It’s easy to forget Lego nearly went bankrupt in 2003, given all its success today.

On Tuesday, Lego reported that sales last year jumped 17% YoY to $9.27B.

After passing Mattel on the toy sales charts in 2014, the 90-year-old Danish company now brings in ~2x its fellow toymaker’s revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Lego’s recent success is also markedly different from developments at Hasbro, which saw revenue decline 9% YoY and recently announced plans to cut 15% of its workforce.

So, what’s going well at Lego?

The company’s been quick to bring new toys to market — last year, 48% of Lego’s products were new — and in expanding its retail footprint. In 2022, Lego opened 155 new shops, with an emphasis on China, bringing its total store count to 904.

Lego has also weathered global supply chain challenges relatively well because of its focus on vertical integration. Last year, the company broke ground on a new factory in Vietnam, and plans to open another in Virginia.

Digital has also been huge

The company said its Builder App was downloaded 13.6m times in 2022, up 42% YoY, and that its social app was downloaded 7.1m times.

Also in 2022, Lego’s website saw 395m visits, up 38% YoY, and the company’s digital team grew 43% to 1.3k people.

This year, Lego plans to launch a kid-friendly metaverse as part of a $1B investment partnership with Epic Games.

Fun fact: Researchers found that a single Lego brick can withstand 950 lbs. of force, or the weight of 375k bricks on top of it.

A few years ago, Kimi Coy and her mother, Carolyn Benyshek, booked a mother-daughter trip to Singapore.

Benyshek flew 2.5 hours from Colorado Springs to meet Coy in Atlanta. The pair took a 15-hour connecting flight to Narita, Japan, then boarded another 7-hour flight to Singapore.

Less than 24 hours after landing, they flew home.

Trips like this are known as mileage runs. These are flights where the mileage is the purpose, not the destination. Travelers take them to earn or maintain elite status with airlines.

The airline miles propelled Coy into platinum status on Delta, qualifying her for several perks.

“Sacrificing that one weekend was absolutely worth it,” said Coy, who also made a similar trip to Budapest.

But are the miles really worth the trouble? And how do mileage runs stack up in a post-pandemic world of higher prices and fewer flights?

Now is not the time to mess with the American consumer.

Per The Wall Street Journal, the National Customer Rage Survey indicates more people than ever are pissed off at companies. New results show 74% of consumers had a problem with a company’s product or service in the past year — up from 66% in 2020, 56% in 2017, and 32% in 1976, the first time a similar survey was released.

People are angry because…

… of a decline in quality across the economy.

• Between 2018 and 2022, the American Customer Satisfaction Index fell from ~77 to 73 on a scale of 0-100, the lowest level since the early 2000s. Industries like fast food, gas stations, and hotels saw declines in satisfaction.

A rising number of frustrated consumers are letting companies hear about it: 43% of Rage Survey respondents said they raised their voice when sharing their complaints with a company, up from 35% in 2017.

They get even louder when they find out they’re talking to a robot. Rage Survey respondents described “being forced to listen to long messages” before speaking to a human as one of their biggest beefs.

Revenge levels are up, too

Per the Rage Survey, 9% of Americans, up from 3% in 2020, have sought revenge against a company by publicly complaining online or in person. That’s still down from a 17% average between 2003 and 2017.

All that anger can be expensive. In 2020, researchers behind the National Consumer Rage Survey estimated that bad customer service could cost corporations $494B.