Jan Beyer has handed out his last exclusive minifigure business card as a LEGO employee. In this third and final part of his farewell interview with BrickNerd, we take a look back at how The LEGO Group has changed over the past two decades—and find out what Jan is up to now. (You might want to read the first and second parts before we begin.)
Jan Beyer with his minifigure counterpart, the exclusive business card that only very important LEGO employees now get to hand out
21 years. That’s how long Jan Beyer was a LEGO employee. In that time, The LEGO Group went from almost bankrupt to the most valuable toy manufacturer in the world. Some journey!
“Yeah, when I started out, there were some really tough years. The company was in the middle of their worst crisis. We got no bonuses and people were fired. We were down to 5,000 employees at the time (there are around 20,000 now) and everyone was nervous. Nobody knew what was next, and we prepared for the worst. And if company owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen hadn’t put his private money into it and saved it, the company would have either disappeared or been sold off.”
From Crisis to Massive Growth
The LEGO turnaround that followed was of epic proportions, but it started slow.
“There were upsides to being so few people. It was much easier for me to make connections, for example, within the company. And after having gone through such a crisis, everyone was very dedicated. LEGO was our life! That gradually changed with growth. More people came in, and I think for a lot of younger employees, it’s very attractive to have LEGO on their CV—it’s an important company. So many of them typically come in, do one or two campaigns and leave, which makes it very hard to integrate them into the ‘LEGO spirit’ if there is such a thing.”
BRICKWORLD CHICAGO 2009: LEGO owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (left) and Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, the CEO Kristiansen left the baton to, which eventually led to The company being saved. Image via Bill Ward on Flickr
“I remember times when Kjeld would walk through the office, saying hi to the employees. Now it’s grown so much that isn’t possible. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that the company is selling like crazy, and I wish them all the best in selling tons of toys. But for the employees, I think we felt more part of it all in the past than is the case now. That spirit gave us what was probably an illusion of being part of it all, but it was still nice to feel that you were important to the company.”
I commented that from my experience, when a company grows, the distances within the company tend to do the same. The LEGO Group is no exception.
“Distance is probably a good word. It’s not necessarily a bad thing because the leadership is getting more structured and more streamlined, and if you’re letting the enthusiasm get the better of you, you could end up making inferior business decisions. But I’m an enthusiastic person, so if I was told as a designer to take seven bricks out of my design because it has to meet a price point that is 20 kroner lower, that would be disappointing to me.”
“I would say that in my early years, it felt as if I was a part of a family business. Now, it all feels much more like a company. I’m speaking in broad terms here, and it probably depends on who your leader is, but I think there have been some changes. The LEGO Group is still a great employer—they offer a lot of benefits for their employees, and it’s a great product and all. But it seems like I’m not the only one who feels that something has changed—that we’ve lost something along the way.”
Graphics by the LEGO group, showing how “The LEGO Group delivered topline growth and outpaced the market in 2023”
Missing the Most
Speaking of the benefits for the employees, when you stay in one company for as long as Jan has, you tend to get used to the status quo. So I asked what the saddest thing about not working for LEGO anymore was.
“I honestly think it probably is that I won’t get to see my great colleagues as often as I have done. Even though I have always worked on a very remote team with colleagues spread all over the world, I have enjoyed that a lot. Today was a day when I got to see a lot of colleagues, which was very nice because people still value the effort I have put in, and they come and say that they miss me. I’ve had great colleagues, and I’ll try to stay in touch with them, but not being in daily or at least regular contact will be a change I won’t appreciate.”
Jan’s retirement fund. Just kidding—this is actually Michael LeCount’s collection, image via Sky News
LEGO employees often jokingly refer to their stash of rare and valuable sets that they’ve acquired over the years as their retirement fund. Not being a LEGO employee anymore means Jan could sell his LEGO sets to people—if he wanted to.
“Or actually build some of them instead of just adding to the pile! For me, a LEGO set really should be built. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a collector and I generally don’t throw things out—LEGO or other things—as my wife would undoubtedly tell you. But I’m not necessarily that attached to all the sets I have. Some of them I really like, the new Icons Retro Radio, for example, or the Ideas Jaws set that I want to build because I remember being so scared by the movie.”
“Some of the other ones I might part with, and some of them I might even give away. If you were a collector who really, really needed this or that set for your collection, it might not be the end of the world for me to give it to you. I’d rather see somebody be super happy about it, instead of it just gathering dust on my shelf.”
Irreplaceable Friends and Gifts
Jan not only gives things away but receives them too. If you’ve followed Jan on social media or read the LEGO Ambassador Network blog, you will have seen him and the other team members occasionally post about amazing stuff they have been gifted by fans.
Holding up one of his Star Ferries during a video call with Beyond The Brick’s Joshua Hanlon and Matthew kay in 2014
“I have a proper treasure trove at home in my LEGO room. For example, I have four Star Ferries—models of the ferries of Hong Kong built by local AFOLs—and they mean a lot to me because I love those ferries. If I went to Hong Kong, I could sail back and forth in Victoria Harbour all day long. I have a fan-built Taipei 101, I have a fully lacquered Aston Martin DB5 from an AFOL, and I have some MOCs built by a Polish fan that will fall to pieces if I so much as touch them, but they are so detailed and amazing to look at.”
“These things all hold memories for me. Asia, for example, has a special place in my heart because the people I’ve met in Asia have always been very kind to me. It’s been a pleasure to be out there. It’s something special to pave the way into a completely new market where the culture is so different and where you really need to build that trust before anyone will actually tell you whether something you’re doing is right or wrong. I put a lot of effort into that and made some really good friends in the process. I can only thank these people for having helped me keep an eye on the community so I could pay attention to the right things. The gifts I was given along the way serve as reminders of these people.”
Visiting AFOLs in Taiwan in 2017
Not all of the things in Jan’s treasure chest are MOCs, though—if you’ve read the first part of this interview, you will remember that he was a big LEGO Space fan growing up.
The elusive 6990 Monorail Transport System. Image via ebay
“I really loved the monorail, like so many others, and I was never really able to get it. Then my good friend Paul Wolters, who was involved with LEGO World in the Netherlands for many years, came up to me and gave me one—a very nice, complete, used example, because he knew how much I wanted one and he had one already. That will obviously never leave my collection. Other things I may have felt that I needed at the time, but then things change so they might not mean the same to me anymore.”
Life After LEGO?
Jan’s new employer, LCP Caspar Bennedsen (left), enlisting the help of LEGO House Master Builder Stuart Harris in an attempt to get Skærbæk Fan Weekend attendees to bid on a LEGO water bottle (long story).
And just like that, a chapter that lasted for more than two decades was over. But another chapter has already started—even if it’s been easy to get the impression that neither Jan nor his new employer, LEGO Certified Professional Casper Bennedsen, are totally sure what he’ll actually be doing in his job at Brick Works.
“Haha! You know, we started talking about this as a joke. I said that if he needed somebody, I’d be there… to which he replied that he actually did need somebody. Then he asked me what title I wanted, and suggested ‘development manager’ which I liked. After that, we talked about what I could actually do, and it turned out to be more than he initially thought because he hadn’t considered my legal background. So I can also look into contracts. We have broadly agreed on the kind of things I can do, and we’ll probably frame that a bit more later, but for now, it feels part of the adventure—figuring out what we can achieve together.”
This is how Caspar Bennedsen’s Brick Works presents themselves on their website
One of the main reasons Jan is no longer a LEGO employee is that he wasn’t comfortable with the direction his job was taking. That feels different at Brick Works.
“For some years now, The LEGO Group has been looking more and more into digital marketing, and I’m a physical kind of person. Caspar and I are walking in the same direction. We’ve got so many ideas and there are so many opportunities we can explore—we just have to figure out which ones to do first. I want to involve the community much more and connect the LCPs much more. Do my thing. Put the right people together. And with Caspar’s great skills and experience in building great models and running a business, that’s a good combination.”
Earlier, Jan mentioned that he saw a lot of colleagues on the day we did this interview. The reason for that was that he visited LEGO Campus… to do something that used to be his job as a LEGO employee but that he was now contracted to do as a Brick Works employee.
Jan with the Class of ‘22, after having set up their models in the display cases at LEGO Campus
“I’m still here, so if somebody needs me, I’m no farther away than a phone call. The difference is that we need to figure out how that works, business-wise, but so far it’s working great. I used to be in charge of which fan models were going into the display cases at LEGO Campus, but when I left, nobody took over that responsibility. Now I’m being contracted to do that same job. There were also a few other opportunities I was not able to fulfill before I left which we are now looking into. I’m not going to talk in detail about things until we’re sure they will work out, but they are exciting things that I’m really looking forward to doing… if they work out.”
Jan at the 2024 Skærbæk Fan Weekend. Something in his face gives the impression that he might like to come back to the steering team
Another past opportunity from 2014 might potentially come back, too. Caspar is part of the steering team at Jan’s old event, the Skærbæk Fan Weekend.
“When LEGO pulled out of the event, I needed to step back—I also wanted to in order to give the new steering team the freedom to do their thing. Now it seems they might be happy about further support, and there’s something very tempting about going back to my roots, so to speak. So why not put some effort into that?”
A Life Full of LEGO
We’re getting to the end of this long interview, and it’s time to step even further away and look at the big picture. In another 21 years, Jan will probably be retired, at which point he will most likely look back at an entire professional life filled with LEGO. Not many people can say that, and it’s a relatively privileged position to be in if you like LEGO. So I asked him what is it that is so special about LEGO?
Taking a swim in a brick pit at LEGO World Copenhagen 2016
“It’s funny. In one way, LEGO is very important to me. I love building and all that, even if I’m not a particularly good builder. My son is much better. But from another perspective, that’s not important at all—because what really triggers me is everything around the brick. What I enjoy building is relationships. For me, LEGO is a medium that I can use to express my passion for connecting people, which is a big part of my personality. Knowing the specialties of different people, putting them together, pulling the strings in the background, and helping them to get to the next level when they connect with the right person.”
Jan with his mosaic counterpart, built by a fan, at Fanwelt Cologne 2008. Image via Tobias Reichling on Brickshelf
“This was always challenging from inside the company. I’ve always been open to sharing my experience, but with community work, it’s very difficult to write all that down. There isn’t really a recipe. If you want to mould a LEGO brick, you take these ingredients, heat them up to a certain temperature, put them in the machine with a certain pressure, and voilà—you’ve got it. With the community, if you use a certain amount of pressure on one specific person it will work, but if you use the same amount of pressure on another person, it won’t work at all. So in one way it’s about the product, the people using it, and how they build with it, but at the same time it’s really about the community, which is the most important part for me.”
Says the community manager.
“Manager sounds so wrong. I’m not managing the community.”
Making connections and facilitating with Polish AFOLs in Warsaw, 2013. Image via Emilus on Brickshelf
Then how about community facilitator?
“Community facilitator. I like that. Pulling the people together, making them feel valued and happy. Making them click! In many ways, it feels like in the past couple of years, there’s been a little shift in the community. It feels like people still like to buy sets, to build sets, to build MOCs—but having awesome experiences, being together, and achieving things together, that seems to matter more and more. Maybe it’s the world around us that has changed, with so many horrible things happening. Maybe we’re feeling the need to have good experiences rather than just physical things. That is what makes us happy, and that is why I try to help people achieve that. By making connections.”
If that’s not a good note to end on, I don’t know what is. It seems our “community facilitator” will keep doing his community work, just for a new employer. Before you know it, Jan Beyer will pop up at an event near you.
“Or you can just come to Skærbæk. Meeting everybody and having a great time, that’s what happens here every year. I love it.”
International chocolate exchange taking place in the Brick Works parking lot in December, 2024
Were you into LEGO back in the crisis days of 2003? Are you a little bit envious of Jan’s four Star Ferries? Has anyone ever given you a monorail? Or did you feel a sudden craving for Norwegian chocolate? Let us know in the comments!
Do you want to help BrickNerd continue publishing articles like this one? Become a top patron like Marc & Liz Puleo, Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg from Brickstuff, John & Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick, Megan Lum, Andy Price, Lukas Kurth from StoneWars, Wayne Tyler, Dan Church, and Roxanne Baxter to show your support, get early access, exclusive swag and more.