👉 Background: Lego is the Danish toy company founded in 1932 and pretty darn famous for its colourful interlocking bricks. But, Lego ain’t just the bricks - they’ve also developed Lego movies and built the Legoland Discovery Centre.

‍👉 What happened: These Legoland Discovery Centres combine Lego-themed play zones, entertainment activities and retail shops... basically kids’ casinos without the pokies. The foot traffic average around 5 million visitors per year. Until now, Merlin Entertainments owned these centres, but now, Lego will acquire 29 Legoland Discovery Centres in a £200m cash deal.

‍👉 What else: Lego already operates about 1,100 branded stores in 54 countries, but this adds a new layer of in-person experiences. Lego says this move will give it more direct control of customer experiences linked to its brand.

‍What's the key learning?

‍💡When a brand becomes a cultural icon, controlling the customer experience becomes just as important as selling the product.

💡Now that Lego directly owns and manages its Discovery Centres, they can unlock some major benefits including:

• More control over brand consistency
• Better access to customer data
• Potentially higher margins because there’s no middleman taking a cut

💡It’s a contrast to Disney, which has outsourced parts of its empire. Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea, for example, is owned and run by the Oriental Land Company under licence; while Disney Cruise Vacations in Japan is also licenced to the same partner. So, outsourcing saves time and resources, but it also means giving up some control.