网购方兴未艾，乐高却开设了其史上最大的实体店

乐高最新的旗舰店于周四在伦敦的莱斯特广场开业。这家两层楼的店面是该公司在全球最大的实体店，拥有一个按原物比例、用637,903块砖搭建的伦敦地铁车厢和20英尺高的大本钟。

在盛大的开业仪式之后，《财富》杂志采访了乐高集团执行副总裁兼首席财务官约翰·古德温，探讨了乐高新伦敦中心，英国脱欧和唐纳德·特朗普的当选对公司的影响，以及公司的未来发展方向。

《财富》：眼下，众多的人都会在线购买玩具，为什么要开设这样一家实体店？

约翰·古德温：我们认为，实体店是乐高品牌主张非常重要的一部分。这些店不仅仅是为了展示我们的产品，更重要的是，它们为人们提供了一个能够直接观看和感受模型和美妙建筑的沉浸式体验。这并不是说在线购物不重要，但我们认为其目的在于为消费者提供不同的产品接触点。

《财富》：这家新店都有哪些独特之处？

约翰·古德温：这是我们第131家店，因此我们从此前开设的店面中吸取了很多经验，我们也将这些经验运用在了这家新店上。该店面的一个独特之处在于楼上的马赛克肖像系统。人们可以在照相亭里照相，然后它会自动生成一个照相人的马赛克脸部模型。然后，顾客会获得盒子装好的模型，这样，人们就可以用乐高积木来搭建自己的画像。这一过程都是在同一天完成的。我们希望，它将成为店面众多亮点中备受欢迎的项目。

Lego’s latest flagship store opened Thursday in London’s Leicester Square. The two-storey store—complete with a life-sized London Underground tube carriage made up of 637,903 bricks and a 20-foot replica of Big Ben—is the largest of its kind in the world.

As the store held its grand opening, Fortune met with John Goodwin, executive vice president and chief financial officer of the Lego Group, to discuss Lego’s new London hub, how Brexit and Donald Trump’s election will affect the company, and what’s next for the tiny yellow bricks.

Fortune: At a time when so many people are buying their toys online, what is the need for a traditional brick-and-mortar store?

John Goodwin: We believe that physical stores are a really important part of our overall Lego brand proposition. These stores are so much more than just a way to see the face of the products that we have to offer—they are environments for people to immerse themselves in and see and experience models and fantastic constructions firsthand. It’s not that we think online shopping is not important, but we think it’s all about providing multiple touch points for consumers.

F: What makes this new store unique?

JG: This is our 131st store, so we’ve gained a lot of experience from previous stores that we’ve looked to bring in here. One thing that is unique about this London store is the Mosaic Portrait system that we have upstairs. You can have your photograph taken in the booth, and it automatically creates a mosaic model of your face. That is then presented to you in a box so you can make your own portrait out of Lego bricks. That all happens in the same day. We’re hopeful that it’s going to be a really popular addition to our store repertoire.

《财富》：随着虚拟和增强现实技术的出现，公司是否会有数字化的压力？

古德温：我们的首席执行官有一句名言：“技术仅适用于那些你出生后才出现的事物。”平板和智能手机并非是针对现如今出生的儿童而设计的技术；它们是这个时代的产物。在未来，虚拟现实和现实增强仅会构成未来儿童的生活环境。因此，最为重要的一点在于，乐高品牌应该与时俱进，因此我们一直在不断地发展，以确保乐高不会与时代脱节。

《财富》：乐高下一步都有哪些计划？

古德温：下周，我们在上海附近的嘉兴工厂将开始运行，其目的是为了供应中国市场，这对我们来说是一个绝佳的机遇。我们开设这一工厂的目的并不是把产品发往欧洲，而是供应亚洲市场，尤其是中国市场。目前，占公司销售额80%的市场所拥有的儿童数量仅占世界儿童总数的20%，因此，这些市场之外还存在很多的机遇。

《财富》：你是否会对当选总统特朗普可能执行的关税政策感到担忧？

古德温：美国的乐高产品来自于墨西哥，因此我们正在密切地关注这一局势；自由贸易对我们来说非常重要，因为它是我们业务模式的核心部分。至于我们是否会因为目前的一些声明就迁回美国，目前还难以给出定论，但对于我们来说，最重要的事情莫过于能够继续向美国儿童提供乐高产品，公司也将为此保驾护航。

《财富》：英国脱欧是否对乐高有影响，你认为未来是否会产生影响？

古德温：因为自由贸易对我们来说至关重要，因此我们必须密切关注脱欧事态的进展。此外，英国在乐高全球业务中也扮演着十分重要的角色，因为我们的全球中心位于伦敦，在这里，我们开展一系列能够影响公司全球产品的业务，而且也拥有来自于各个不同背景的员工。关注脱欧进展的目的在于确保公司能够继续利用伦敦巨大的吸引力。我们一直在尽力保持公司的政治中立性，但公司一心致力于为所有的儿童提供服务，并在寻找实现这一目标的途径。

《财富》：说道保持政治中立性，乐高本周终止了与英国右翼倾向的报纸《The Daily Mail》的合作，并因此而上了新闻（乐高最近表示，公司将不再通过本报纸发送免费赠品。而一周期，一名家长曾向乐高写了一专封公开信，投诉该报对“社会不同阶层存在令人发指的歧视”）。这对于公司来说是一个重大决定吗？

古德温：我们曾与该报合作，开展赠送推广活动，目前已经结束，而且在可预见的未来，我们也没有计划再次开展合作。我认为，倾听消费者的心声对于我们来说是非常重要的，它一直是我们的动力。我们拥有180万个消费者联系方式，例如像伦敦这样的店面，或消费者帮助热线。我们一直在努力地倾听儿童、家长和其祖父母所关心的话题，并对此作出响应。

在我于乐高供职的4年多时间里，我们的动力绝非来自于政治因素，而一直是源于消费者，我们会随着消费者情绪的变化而改变。

《财富》：乐高是一家私营公司，它会上市吗？

公司的家族所有者完全致力于拓展乐高在全球的娱乐体验。我个人认为这一点在任何情况下都不会改变。

《财富》：在过去，乐高因打造性别倾向型玩具而遭到抨击，对此你怎么看？

古德温：在历史上，我们从未打算赋予乐高产品性别色彩，但我们一直在努力开发适用于不同游戏模式的产品。现实在于，某些儿童，尤其是男孩，喜欢冲突类游戏环境，而其他儿童，尤其是女孩，喜欢关系类游戏环境。我们一直在尝试打造能够吸引拥有不同兴趣儿童的产品主题，有时候，人们会把这一举措误认为，“这款玩具仅适用于女孩或仅适用于男孩”，但这并不是我们的意图。

《财富》：你最喜欢乐高的哪套玩具？

古德温：我喜欢所有的产品系列，但如果非得选的话，我会选择“创造者”产品线，它将真实体验与非常有趣的模型结合起来，同时预留了供个人发挥的空间。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：詹妮

F: With the advent of technology like virtual and augmented reality, do you feel the pressure to digitalize?

JG: Our CEO has a great saying: “‘Technology’ only applies to those things that occur after you’re born.” Tablets and smartphones are not technology for children born today; it’s just the world that they came into. And in the future, VR and AR are just going to be the world children are born into. So what’s really important is that the Lego brand is relevant in that world, so we’re constantly evolving and ensuring that Lego remains relevant.

F: What sort of developments are in the pipeline for Lego?

JG: Next week we are opening a Chinese factory in Jiaxing, near Shanghai, in order to supply the Chinese market, which is an amazing opportunity for us. We’re building the factory not to ship products over to Europe, but to supply to the Asian market and particularly the Chinese market. About 80% of our sales currently come from markets that only contain 20% of the world’s children, so there are lots of opportunities out there for us.

F: Do you have concerns about the tariffs that President-elect Trump may enforce?

JG: America’s Legos come from Mexico, so we’re monitoring the situation very carefully; free trade’s very important to us as it’s a central part of our business model. It’s too early to say whether we’ll move back to the U.S. based on the statements that have been made, but the most important thing for us is to be able to keep delivering Legos to U.S. children—and we’ll make sure we can keep doing that.

F: Has Brexit had any effect on Lego and do you expect it to in the future?

JG: As free trade is so important to us, we have to monitor the developments of Brexit carefully. Also, the U.K. plays an important role for us globally because we have global hub based in London, where we do a number of activities that impact our products around the globe and people are recruited from all backgrounds. We’ll need to monitor Brexit developments to ensure we can still leverage the great attraction of London. We try very hard to be non-political, but we are strongly committed to reaching all children and finding a way to do that.

F: In terms of being non-political, Lego was in the news this week for ending its relationship with the right-leaning British tabloid, The Daily Mail. (Lego recently said it would no longer run giveaways with the paper a week after a parent penned an open letter to Lego complaining of the Mail’s “unashamed discrimination towards sections of our society.”) Was that a significant decision for the company?

JG: We were running a distribution promotion with the Mail that has now ended, and we’ve got no plans in the foreseeable future to do that again. I think it’s important for us to listen to our consumers; that always drives us. We have 1.8 million different consumer contacts, whether that be in stores like this or a consumer helpline, and we try very hard to listen to what’s important to children, their parents, and their grandparents and to respond to that.

In my four-plus years with the company, it’s never been political things that have driven us—it’s always the consumer that drives what we do, and as the consumers’ moods change then we change too.

F: Lego is a private company—would it ever go public?

JG: Our family owners are completely committed to expanding Lego play experiences throughout the whole world. I personally cannot conceive of any circumstance in which that would change.

F: Lego has come under fire in the past for creating toys that play to gender stereotypes. What do you say to that?

JG: We’ve never in our history intended Lego to be gender-specific, but what we do try to do is develop products that appeal to different play patterns. What’s a reality is certain children—typically boys—like conflict-based play environments and other children—typically girls—like relationship-based play environments. We’ve tried to create product themes that appeal to all of these different interest levels and sometimes this can be misinterpreted as us saying ‘this is only for girls’ or ‘this is only for boys’, but that’s not our intention at all.

F: Finally, what’s your favorite Lego set?

JG: I love all the product range, but if I had to choose one line I’d choose the ‘Creator’ line, which combines real-life experiences with really fun models, while allowing a degree of personal adaptation.