LEGO KSA exceeds initial sales projection by 3X

LEGO KSA exceeds initial sales projection by 3X – within a week of the brand launch in Saudi Arabia. “What’s heartening is that our combined sales – from online and offline – during the first week have been 3X more than projected,” reveals Phillip Smith, group head of digital, Kamal Osman Jamjoom (KOJ) Group.

Spread across 1,690 sqft, the first LEGO store opened in Jeddah at Red Sea Mall, which is built as a creative hub for the LEGO community. Within 24 hours of the opening of brick-and-mortar, the KOJ Group launched the online LEGO store.

“Our goal was to offer an omnichannel experience to customers from day one. It was important for us to integrate the certified online LEGO store within the KOJ Group technology stack so that the brand can avail all our omnichannel capabilities. We are one of the first franchisees globally to use the LEGO international logo online, offering a global look and feel enhanced by our highly sophisticated yet localised omnichannel capabilities,” Smith states.

Open for over a week now, the LEGO KSA store has performed better than online. While the store has been able to tap into the mall traffic, an e-commerce site tends to take around two weeks to stabilise after going live.

LEGO – in-store virtual reality screen

Enhancing a seamless experience

As LEGO KSA exceeds initial sales projection by 3X; little over a week since opening, the brand plans to further enhance a seamless experience by launching the click-and-collect option towards the fourth quarter of 2020. “This will further facilitate a seamless experience as we roll out more stores in KSA – the next one will open in Riyadh. In fact, we have an ambitious rollout plan and the locations will be determined based on the purchase trends online. We will also launch a native mobile app for LEGO KSA in September, which we are building on React Native, as we are seeing 40% of our revenues in KSA come from our existing KOJ mobile apps,” Smith shares.

The LEGO brand offers a global stock view in KSA, which in an out-of-stock situation helps the store staff to order a product online or from the KOJ distribution centre in Saudi Arabia to be delivered to the customer’s preferred doorstep. “We are constantly improving our warehouse and last-mile capabilities that can handle over 10,000 orders per day, using various third-party logistics partners. As such, we have the capability to scale LEGO up online from zero to thousands of orders per day. Over the last 18 months, we have massively scaled up the group’s e-commerce capabilities and ecosystem, which is why we could handle a 2,900% growth online as COVID-19 broke out,” Smith states.

A 360-degree view at CX

Operating Early Learning Centre across the Middle East, the KOJ Group has a fair understanding of the toy market. The foremost learning is to attract the customer early, so that – in case of LEGO – they start with the Duplo Classic bricks for the 1-2-year olds and continue buying more complex sets. “When customers register online, they only have to mention the date of birth of their children, which helps us to understand and recommend when that child should transition to the next LEGO set. We have made the website hyper-personalised; if a customer searches bricks for a particular age group, the options are curated dynamically, content is repositioned and recommendations are made accordingly,” Smith elaborates.

In addition, LEGO KSA is connecting its store and website to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) group data lake – which is a centralised, curated and secured repository that stores all data in original form and prepared for analysis. “This will help us to get a 360-degree view of the customer behaviour, their purchase patterns, preferred channels and engage with them accordingly. We are also deploying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) features at scale across the group to better understand the data from the data lake. This will help us to sharpen our customer communication further. AI and ML will help us to effectively deliver messages to unknown customers through Google and Facebook ads, while with existing customers we will better understand their preferred channel and time of the day to deliver our hyper-personalised content,” he explains.

While the online experience is hyper-personalised, the in-store environment is fun and highly engaging. There are interactive stations where children and their families can play and engage with hands-on, fluid play experiences. Elevating the experience, there is a virtual reality (VR) screen in the store, which turns the picture on a LEGO box into a 3D model on the screen, displaying what the set will look like when it’s built.

From Bugatti to Burj Khalifa: a wide product range

“We were keen to make a statement about the iconic LEGO brand’s arrival in the Kingdom by offering a blended – omnichannel – and a localised experience,” Smith adds. “The traction and the customer feedback for both channels customers have been very encouraging. Customers are excited about the depth of offering and the ability to shop across channels.”

The LEGO KSA store offers a wide product range – from global exclusives like Bugatti Veyron car to regional landmarks such as Burj Khalifa as well as exclusives including Manchester United Stadium, International Space Station, Fiat 500, Pirates of Barracuda Bay, Fairground Haunted House and Lamborghini, among others.

“We wanted our Saudi customers to access a wide range of LEGO products, from regional landmarks to global favourites. While launching the first LEGO store in KSA was in itself exciting, what was crucial for us was to offer a localised experience. That’s why we have commissioned a large-scale 3D model of a traditional Saudi family and a mosaic of Jeddah’s iconic Old Souk. We have also trained our store staff to speak the LEGO language to offer the most authentic experience of a global brand with local touches,” Smith shares.

And for the record, the first product sold in the LEGO KSA store was the iconic London bus.

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