Best of BrickNerd: Weekend Highlight in honor of Jesper Vilstrup announcing that he is moving on from LEGO. We wish him well! Article originally published August 14, 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the whole world, but the LEGO House has made it through relatively unscathed—mostly thanks to its kind and “wealthy uncle” (The LEGO Group). LEGO House CEO Jesper Vilstrup sits down with BrickNerd to explain how.

LEGO House in Billund on a sunny Thursday in August

LEGO House, an architectural marvel dreamt up by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), opened its doors in September 2017. The building and its very hands-on content has received a lot of praise since then, and the visitor numbers were growing … until the world ground to a halt in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

BrickNerd: Thank you for sitting down with BrickNerd, Jesper! How has the last year and a half been for LEGO House?

LEGO HOUSE CEO Jesper Vilstrup, buzzing with excitement at the thought of the end of the covid-19 pandemic

Jesper Vilstrup, LEGO House CEO: It’s been very, very different from what we expected it to be. 2019 was a great year for LEGO House, and we had a lot of tailwind coming into 2020. We had a very nice and optimistic business plan prepared for the next three-year period, expecting to continue growing our guest numbers and delivering on the great experience that we were offering.

And then as we entered into March, everything basically fell apart from one day to the next. Over the cause of a single week, so many things happened that we did not at all see coming. We had to close down completely for 100 days in the spring of 2020, and during those 100 days I had mainly two concerns, I would say.

One concern was obviously figuring out how we could—when we got to open again—continue delivering this great hands-on experience that we did. I honestly felt that our entire DNA as an organisation was under pressure because in basically any activity we have, the essence of our experience is that you put your hands into the big bins to build with LEGO bricks.

BN: Not the best thing to do during a pandemic.

JV: Not at all, so that was one key concern. The other one was, what about the organisation? We are so dependant on our Play Agents, who walk the LEGO House floor and interact with the public. They are such an integrated part of the experience. How could we ensure that we retained that competence and kept them motivated? Those were two key challenges. We were also obviously very curious about whether the experience would still be there when we were allowed to open again in June—because we suffered from a lot of restrictions that had been put into place—and how rusty the organisation would be after having basically been standing still for more than three months.

The lEGO House Play Agents (Photo: LEGO House via LinkedIn)

Fortunately, it turned out that we were actually still able to deliver a very strong and meaningful hands-on experience even with the restrictions, and actually came out of the high season of 2020 in a decent way. Obviously the guest numbers were much lower than what we had in the past, but the experience was good and also, the employees still enjoyed being part of the organisation and continued delivering those experiences. Then we had another lockdown at the end of 2020 and into the beginning of ’21, but now we are here, back in business again, and slowly coming back to more of a normality where we have less and less restrictions, which is just a great feeling. So you can say it’s been very much of a roller coaster ride over the last year and a half, no doubt about that.

BN: The relief must be tangible now that you can see the end of it.

A Part of the LEGO Ecosystem

JV: I think we can see light at the end of the tunnel. But throughout the pandemic, both myself and the rest of the organisation are feeling really, really fortunate that we are part the LEGO ecosystem. That has meant that we can defend taking the long-term perspective, while many other attractions and industries that are suffering from the same challenges need to think much more short-term. Because of the LEGO ecosystem we’ve actually been able to continue investing into the experience, we’ve continued investing into our organisation, and that’s also why we manage to maintain such a high level and high quality in our experience.

Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen at the LEGO HouSe grand opening

BN: This is interesting, because LEGO House is famously a house for all LEGO fans, and a showcase for the brick, essentially. I vaguely remember Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, during the grand opening back in 2017, saying something about LEGO House not needing to be profitable; that it’s not there to make sense from a business perspective. Is that really the case for you?

JV: That really is the case.

BN: That obviously dramatically changes your outlook in a pandemic.

JV: It does. We’ve had a very open dialogue with our board of directors in LEGO House regarding how we could get through this crisis in the best way possible. Our main goals have been to defend the guest experience and the employee experience. And then, when it came to guest numbers and finances … well, we would just need to take the hit on those that was required for that. We also needed to make sure that we had a meaningful experience to offer the public when we got to the back end of the pandemic. This has all been a very clear brief to me and to the leadership team, from the board of directors—including Kjeld, who is on our board of directors.

This does not mean that we have not had to cut costs, like everyone else. We have had to, unfortunately, lay off some of our great colleagues, and we’ve had to close some of the positions that we had open and decide not to recruit for those positions. But I think that’s also a natural thing to do. It’s all about running a responsible business, even though we are not here for the profit, because we needed to adjust to a lower activity level in the period.

BN: But obviously, having no people here for such a long period of time must affect the bottom line.

JV: It affects the bottom line a lot, there’s no doubt about that. We had quite a significant fixed cost base—I mean, just the share of employees we have in the team and paying salaries for those, that’s a lot of money. We also chose not to seek financial compensation from the government, which we were actually entitled to do given the setup we had, but we decided to seek compensation within the LEGO ecosystem instead, which I think makes sense.

BN: Well, the LEGO Group has, of course, made a decent amount of money during this period …

JV: The LEGO Group has done absolutely fantastic throughout the pandemic. So obviously, that’s the good thing about being part of this great ecosystem.

for those who haven’t visited the lego house in a while, the surroundings have changed a bit! These buildings have all magically appeared within the past couple of years.

Meet the Play Agents

BN: You mentioned the Play Agents earlier. Some BrickNerd readers may not be familiar to this group of employees. Can you explain why they are so close to your heart and so important for LEGO House?

JV: Let me illustrate that by telling you about something that happened just before our grand opening back in 2017. Just as much as demonstrating the importance of the Play Agents, it also demonstrates the importance of collaboration across the entire organisation.

What happened was that two days before the opening, at the end of the day, there were still people working in the House, but not very many. One of our colleagues walked through the Red Zone, where our famous giant LEGO waterfall is located, and we have the sound of water playing over the speakers in this zone, so it sounds like water is coming down. Then she started listening more closely and suddenly realised that the sound she was hearing was different from how it should normally be. She looked up … and saw water starting to come through the ceiling!

Jesper reminiscing about that unwelcome additional waterfall in the red zone

She immediately called the guys from Facility, but more and more water started pouring down, splashing into all the brick bins and onto the floor. Everyone who was still in the building was in place in the Red Zone within three to four minutes, and we used big containers, pieces of plastic and buckets, but the water came through the ceiling faster and faster. Apparently the heavy rain earlier that day had led to one of the drains on the terrace above the Red Zone getting clogged, so the water had started finding its way into places where it should never have been and through the ceiling.

We eventually managed to get the drain fixed quite quickly while working on getting rid of the water that got in, and the whole thing turned into a fantastic team building experience. We were just so incredibly fortunate that it didn’t happen half an hour or an hour later, because then we would have entered the building the next day to find everything simply destroyed by the water. That would actually, potentially, have ruined the grand opening that we had planned for, because this entire room would have needed to be repaired. But what I remember the most is just that everyone, no matter where they were, just came running to the Red Zone and started helping each other, doing whatever they could. It ended up fine, but we had 10-15 minutes where everything was just completely chaos!

BN: That’s a great story! So what did you do, then, to keep the Play Experts busy and motivated when there were many fewer visitors, and maybe especially through the full lockdowns?

JV: We dealt with that in two different ways during the two different lockdowns that we had. During the first lockdown we basically sent them all home and said, “We’ll keep paying your salary, but you need to stay at home and then we’ll let you know when we need you to come back again. We won’t lay off anyone.”

Then the keyword was communication, communication, communication. Several times per week we had communication going out saying “this is what has happened, this is where we are right now, this is what we are thinking,” so they could actually follow this on the internal communication channel that we have all the time. We also hosted and arranged a number of online meetings where everyone was able to call in and I and the rest of the leadership team joined, and I made several selfie videos where I just gave 2-3-minute updates and explained the current situation. And every time there was a press conference with the Prime Minister providing updates, we wrote to the organisation and said “OK, there’s been this press conference tonight, this is what she said, this is what it means for the LEGO House.” So we tried to keep them in the loop as much as possible.

When they came back and started working last summer, we continued giving them all the information we could, and then we had another lockdown in the beginning of 2021. This time, we actually decided that we would try to keep as many as we could engaged in LEGO House. Despite the House being closed, we took them in and engaged them in several tasks: Major building events, a lot of cleaning, and a lot of preparing for the future. We really tried to keep them busy, because we were paying their salary anyway, and we felt it was better that they were engaged than just sitting at home...

BN: … and just receiving the money for nothing!

JV: I liked the second version a lot better than the first version. That actually worked quite well.

The Things that Changed

BN: The fact that the Play Agents were involved in these things brings me to my next question: What changes have you made during the pandemic?

JV: First of all, we’ve tried to make the experience you get when you come to the House as meaningful as possible despite the restrictions that we had. The visible things have been, obviously, hand sanitiser dispensers all over the place, much more visible cleaning throughout the day, and more cleaning staff on the floor. And guests would normally dive into all our DUPLO bins, so we took those out, because we saw that that was not OK from a hygiene point of view. Those were some of the obvious things, and then we did some more stuff behind the scenes.

Every evening when the guests left the House, we actually took out all the loose bricks and put them in quarantine for 72 hours, and had a rotation scheme. So every evening, twelve Play Agents spent an hour with snow shovels taking out all the bricks. That was not the most motivating task. It was OK in the beginning, but let me tell you: The day when we announced that we would stop doing that, was a very cheerful day for everyone.

BN: Understandable! And regarding the experiences within the House itself, what can the LEGO fans who have not been able to come, expect to see when they eventually return?

JV: In the beginning of this year we refreshed the RoboLab, so what used to be a winter mission, to rescue mammoths from the ice is now a summer mission, where you need to help the bees make honey. That’s a really, really nice experience, and I think a lift from an experience point of view. We have also changed a number of the models in the display cases. And last year we decided not to change the exhibition in the Masterpiece Gallery, where the fan creations are displayed because it was simply not possible to fly the fans to Billund for them to do put their models into the showcases—but this year we will actually change that exhibition it in September. It will just be slightly different from what we normally do.

BN: Interesting! So there will be a new twist to the changeover?

JV: Yes! There will be a new exhibition, just not like the one we normally have. That said, our plan is definitely to go back to the original idea that there will be fifteen fans from all over the world who will be able to display their models in there. The fans have and always will be a very, very important part of the House, so having the opportunity to exhibit those MOCs in the Masterpiece Gallery (shown in the slideshow below) is just a vital thing for the House and everything the House stands for. Getting back to a normality in terms of that is going to be so important for us. It’s also never going to be the same if it’s just shipped in and put in there, part of it is also seeing the face of the fans when they come in, put their pride and joy into the display case, nursing for their models…

BN: Applying the final touches to make everything look just right for the next year!

JV: Exactly. That’s just a fantastic thing to witness.

BN: But even if you haven’t been making changes in the Masterpiece Gallery, all the fan creations that have gone on display in the showcases in the other zones, as competition winners, have still had to be shipped (including those made by BrickNerd’s very own contributors Ted and Malin, shown below!). Has that created any particular challenges for Master Builder Stuart Harris and the rest of his team?

JV: Stuart and some of the other model designers do spend a bit of time putting things back together when they arrive, which has also been a learning curve over the last year or so. There will always be a need for a little repair work. But Stuart is really good at putting things back together!

BN: So back to this twist you were talking about… when will we be able to find out what that means?

Welcoming Back the Fans

JV: Our little surprise will be public for the AFOL Day, which we are so much looking forward to hosting again on September 23rd, the Thursday before the Skærbæk Fan Weekend. Right now we have 300 people signed up for that day, so there are still 300 open slots and we of course hope that we will get to our maximum 600. It’s going to be so great to have that day again in the House, that was really missing last year. It’s one of the key milestones that we have over the cause of a year, and it’s a day that we are all really looking forward to again. It’s like all the fans are coming home!

BN: It will almost feel like a kick-off. “We’re back!”

JV: It will! And it’s such a nice start to the Skærbæk Fan Weekend as well. We’re really excited about that. But during the lockdown we also hosted a number of web events, and last year we actually made an attempt to host the AFOL Day as an online thing, along with various other web events where we had fans who were able to dial in and engage with some of our Play Agents in various activities. I’d say that was a good alternative, but it simply doesn’t beat the experience of being here physically. It is a very physical house, and the experience has been made in a way so you need to be here, you need to get your hands on the bricks, and be part of creating the experience yourself.

A recent addition to the LEGO House displays: LEGO MASTERS DENMARK winners Magnus Klint Sørensen & Frederik Randbøll Jørgensen’s build from the final. what is it? Their description: “Nine wizards involved in a chaotic and disorganised bank robbery, fleeing across a suspension bridge and into a giant dimension portal”. Well, Clearly!

BN: Still, the pandemic has pushed more of your content online. I hosted a virtual Fan Evening with AFOLs who have become LEGO designers, there was an online Christmas Lunch, you are doing virtual History Tours with Kristian Reimer Hauge, and you had LEGO CON this summer. Will you still be offering some online content even after the pandemic?

JV: There is no doubt that we have learned that this is a new way for us to reach fans that are not, for various reasons, able to go to Billund. So without having very specific plans, I can definitely say that you will see a more online version of LEGO House as well, just not at the expense of the physical version—that will always be our primary focus. But of course, we have fans from all over the world and they all want to experience the LEGO House, and I think we’ve learned over the last year and a half that there are so many possibilities to do things online as well. Of course we should capitalise on that.

BN: It has been almost impossible to plan anything during the pandemic, because the rules have been changing all the time. You’ve added some more long-term stuff, like the 10th anniversary Ninjago exhibition in the History Collection (shown below), but it must have been frustrating for you to decorate LEGO House for Halloween, for Christmas and so on, not knowing whether new restrictions would be put into place and nobody would be allowed to come and see what you had done?

JV: Many things have been frustrating. But I also think that at some point, you just get used to the possibility that things might change tomorrow. Personally, I have chosen to be frustrated about what I can change, and less so about what I can not influence anyway, and that is also the approach we’ve taken towards the organisation: We have been doing everything we can within what we can control, but what we can not control, we simply have to relate to in the best way we can. That said, we have obviously had many, many activities that just went down the drain.

BN: And people have been pouring their heart and soul into them just to see them vanish into thin air.

JV: But that’s just how it is. So we have tried to learn from everything we’ve done and tried to focus on how we can apply what we’ve learned to a future context.

BN: A final question from us at BrickNerd, Jesper: Apart from the upcoming surprise in the Masterpiece Gallery, do you have any other interesting plans for the near future of LEGO House that you can reveal exclusively to BrickNerd?

A Final Reveal

JV: We are working on a very exciting new experience that we’re planning to have ready for when the House opens again in January 2022. This experience will basically replace one of the experiences in the House today. We’re removing everything from that experience and putting something completely new in there. So we’re really excited to finalise the development of that and get that installed, and see how fans of all ages will react to that. It’s going to be great!

BN: And no more hints about that? Can you at least tell us which experience that will be removed, so fans will have one last chance to try that out before it disappears?

JV: I can do that. It’s the Critter Creator area that we will be taking out.

BN: The one where you can build small creatures that then dance to the music as the bass makes them move?

JV: Yes. And without revealing more, I can say that the new experience is also linking into the “emotional competence” that we have in that area.

BN: You heard it here first! Maybe not an exclusive reveal, but at least a promise that there is an exclusive reveal coming up… Thank you so much for your time, Jesper.

Hopefully many BrickNerd readers will be able to visit for the AFOL Day in September!

JV: Hopefully!

Have you been lucky enough to visit LEGO House? Are you excited to be able to return soon, or visit for the first time? Do you envy the Play Agents who can roam the floors of this magic building every day? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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