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though they have a huge impact, they keep the ship firmly on course to deliver the mission statement as well as making sure there is a balance between the commercial and philanthropic aims of the company. What does The LEGO Group’s charitable work do? The LEGO Group passionately believes in allowing all children to learn through play and, we acknowledge that not all kids have access to our products and as such we have a group that help create community events in environments where less advantaged children do not have access to the same opportunities to play is important. Furthermore, the LEGO Foundation works as a separate charity to build a future in which learning through play empowers all children, they do that through a combination of research and humanitarian work in developing countries. Why do you think LEGO has been consistently been voted the most reputable company in the world? Firstly, we’re a brand really dedicated to our mission of inspiring and developing the builders of tomorrow. That focus on the future and making the world better for our children is really fundamental to everything we do. Also, unlike many companies who remove value with every new product that they bring to the market. Look at modern mobile phone companies that build in obsolescence into their products by removing software support after only a few years. In comparison, LEGO is founded on a principal that Only The Best Is Good Enough ('det bedste er ikke for godt' in Danish) and the basic idea that we want our System in Play to increase in value the more you buy so, you could buy a LEGO set today and the bricks would click together with the first bricks ever made. Are you thinking about creating anti LEGO slippers? Unfortunately not, although we have just entered into a collaboration with Adidas to create a pretty cool pair of trainers with LEGO.
What have you learned in your career so far? Do not plan too far ahead in life. Definitely have a plan but be prepared to adapt and modify what you do and find a job you enjoy. What is the future of LEGO in a world where computer games such as Fortnite are becoming increasingly popular? LEGO are definitely facing up to the challenge of the digital competition and while it is certainly a challenge, we firmly believe that there will always be the demand for those that want to click two LEGO bricks together in some form. That there will still be the desire for a real world experience that can be shared by adults and children alike. LEGO’s tie in with Super Mario has been enormously successful, perhaps less so has been Hidden Side, a creative building tech toy and augmented reality rolled into one which invites children to join a fearless team of ghost hunters. Its intention was to engage those children who were moving away from LEGO as they traded into gaming. As it becomes more involved in digital products, does LEGO have a role in promoting on line safety? Absolutely, LEGO are very concerned with digital safety and are looking to take the best aspects of social media forward to engage and create content in a way that unsafe platforms currently do – but without the inherent danger of harm that comes with them. We’ve just launched a new ‘Build + Talk’ activity guide which is designed to help families talk about cyberbullying in an engaging way. LEGO is a family company (LEGO is held and controlled by the Kristiansen family and their foundations). How much influence do they have over the running of the company? While they have less involvement on a day to day basis where authority is devolved to a CEO and executive committee of corporate professionals. Overall
Kyle Karim (99-06) may just have the best job in the world, as one of the Directors of Marketing at the world’s biggest toy company LEGO he knows he is lucky to have ‘such an awesome career that lets me act like a kid for most of the time’. Indeed during his first year with the company he was working on the LEGO Super Mario interactive toy. ‘Much of that time was spent playing Super Mario to try and understand just what made it so much fun. Remembering just what people love about the world of Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and of course Bowser.’ Kyle arrived at Dulwich in 1999 and by his own admission made a rather uninspiring start to life at Dulwich. ‘I thought I was pretty cool and didn’t work that hard. Certainly during the first three years I was not exactly the model student. Not troublesome but, not the most assiduous either. It was not until Year 10 that I had what you might call my wake up moments. The first was a careers talk in the Master’s Library during which I reflected on the opportunities I was missing at such an incredible school. The second came when I realised that I still wanted to stay in touch with rugby, a sport that had been a major part of my life until my playing days were brought to a premature end. While on tour with the school in Australia in 2004 I broke my collar bone during a match against the U20 South‐West Australia representative team in Perth. After getting his A levels in English, History and Geography, Kyle left the College in 2006 to attend St Andrew’s, a university he had never visited before arriving for Freshers week. It was ‘tiny, the size of Dulwich Village!’ but he ‘got stuck in’ to his degree, to sport and to creative ventures that before university he might have shied away from. In his final year he ran a student fashion show which allowed him to meet corporate partners and ‘try on for size the corporate world’. It also showed him that he had a creative streak that until then had remained hidden. ‘I don’t feel that I had much exposure to creative subjects while at the College’. He also became involved in rugby and for some time genuinely thought he would have a professional career in the sport. A KYLE KARIM The best job in the world?
belief reinforced by the success he achieved in gaining two international coaching caps, coaching the Scottish Students and working with the SRU. After St Andrews Kyle went to work for Proctor and Gamble in Switzerland, ‘the largest consumer goods company in the world’, where he joined the Professional Beauty Division ‘spending a lot of time with hairdressers, nail technicians and beauticians designing products to make their jobs easier. It was an amazing place to learn the fundamentals of brand building.’ It was there that he launched his first brand, a hair styling range called EIMI, designed to reflect and equip the melting pot of ethnicities and inspirations across the globe. Next came COTY, a global beauty company making cosmetic, skin, fragrance and hair brands where he took over the UK business. The move was much more commercial, owning the P&L, driving sales, pricing and managing customer, growth. It was though not an environment that engaged him for long. ‘I got bored and felt the need to do something new so I approached the company and they sent me off to set up a corporate incubator working with start‐ups and entrepreneurs. I found myself working from a garage in Shoreditch helping to launch Beautonomy, a company that sought to give consumers the tools to create their own beauty products.’ And so to LEGO, which he joined in September 2019 as one of the Marketing Innovation Directors in the Creative Play Lab, ‘which is as much fun as it sounds’ where Kyle and the team are passionately looking at new ways for children, adults and families to play with LEGO across the world. Kyle suggests that arriving at LEGO shows that an inconsequential set of meandering decisions can take you from sitting in a talk at Dulwich College to working in the biggest toy company in the world and getting paid to figure out howmore children can continue to learn through play.
LEGO is the world's number one toy company, generating $18bn a year in revenue and employing over 17,500. The LEGO Group began in the workshop of Dane, Ole Kirk Christiansen in the early 1930’s LEGO means ‘play well’ in Danish. LEGO is sold and trodden on in bare feet in 140 countries. LEGO make more car tyres than any car company in the world.
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