Some bad news if you live in Western Europe, as LEGO has confirmed rumours of price increases across the region – which impacts markets like Germany.
Update: LEGO have issued an official statement through the LEGO Ambassador Network, clarifying this.
The LEGO Group has no plans to increase the recommended retail price (RRP) of its portfolio of products.
In Western Europe, we’ve taken steps to make RRP pricing more consistent across different countries from 2022. The RRP of the majority of LEGO sets will not change as a result of this. However, on a small selection of sets the RRP will either go down or up depending on the set and the country.
There are currently no plans to make such changes in other markets.
It’s important to note that the final price charged to shoppers is set by retailers, not the LEGO Group.
Thanks to Brickset and German LEGO set Zusammengebaut, we have the following statement from LEGO Germany.
For us as the LEGO Group, it is important to offer our consumers and trading partners continuity and transparency. We are changing our recommended retail prices across the Western Europe region to ensure we deliver on this promise. The prices we share with our retail partners are suggested retail prices (MSRP) – final retail prices are at the sole discretion of the retailer. For German-speaking countries, this means a higher recommended price for some sets, but also a lower price for other products.
We are convinced that we offer good value for money. Anyone who buys a LEGO product receives a safe product of very high quality that is passed on from generation to generation. Our products offer a gaming experience that encourages creativity and imagination – you can replay stories, come up with new stories and build everything you can imagine over and over again.
I’m not European, so I’m not 100% familiar with pricing variations in Europe, but according to Brickset, sets in Germany have been traditionally cheaper than neighbouring countries, so this moves sounds like it’s meant to introduce some parity and consistency with pricing.
Prices are expected to rise by about 10-20% on certain sets, and changes will come in on 1 January 2022, for example with 31120 Medieval Castle going from €99.99 to €119.99.
Personally, I think this move is a response to the Supply Chain Crisis currently engulfing the world, which has seen increased prices of logistics, raw materials and in nearly every part of the supply chain. The statement sounds like PR fluff, that avoids attributing this increase to any one factor.
Anecdotally, Australia and New Zealand also received a bit of a price hike earlier this year, so it looks like LEGO are finally looking at increasing prices after a few years of relatively stable prices.
This doesn’t bode well, and while it may feel like greed, I do think the catalyst is still the overall increase of prices (hello, inflation!) caused by global supply chain issues. The thing about price is that, unfortunately for discretionary purchases like premium toys – they aren’t that elastic, and will likely stay at the new “floor” even if the price of raw materials and transportation.
Anyway, I’d expect some gradual increases of LEGO set prices around the world in 2022, seeing how things are going.
Thanks to Brickset for the heads up.
I will be certainly much more selective on my Lego purchases, as for the big UCS sets, I feel that they are becoming too expensive, I don’t feel that the prices for the current UCS falcon or ISD are justified. They are double the price tag, ok so the new models have a higher piece count but it’s mainly extra greebling, as the main structure on these is pretty much the same.
Massive profits during Covid and continuing.
Should be reducing prices not whacking them up.
VFM has started dropping and I’ve reduced expenditure quite a bit lately. Not only that I, advise parents about VFM and how to save money on the secondary markets.
Doubt that Lego cares.
I agree. On the bright side, we’ve seen some really great sets at the lower end of the price point.
But unfortunately, LEGO is a business and they don’t really have an incentive to lower prices when we keep buying LEGO at the prices they dictate…
“We are convinced that we offer good value for money.” What a joke!