How LEGO builds community and embraces innovation

Episode transcript, edited for clarity

[00:00:19] Bill Thorne: Welcome to Retail Gets Real, where we hear from retail's most fascinating leaders about the industry that impacts everyone, everywhere, every day. I'm Bill Thorne from the National Retail Federation, coming to you from NRF 2025: Retail's Big Show right here in the heart of New York City. And on today's very special episode, we're going to be talking with Martin Urrutia.

He is the head of global retail experience and innovation for LEGO. Now, we're going to talk to Martin about his favorite part about working for LEGO and how he continues to innovate the retail experience. Martin, welcome to Retail Gets Real.

[00:00:58] Martin Urrutia: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to come back to NRF year after year, see the evolution, and probably what it excites me is to see the amount of people that are working in retail.

[00:01:08] Bill Thorne: I know.

[00:01:09] Martin Urrutia: Coming from, I don't know, 140 countries, I think, we heard. So retail is fantastic. So fascinating to see and be part of the journey and humble to be back again.

[00:01:18] Bill Thorne: It's a lot of fun. For us, of course, National Retail Federation, it's a lot of work. But the one thing that really sustains us is the amount of enthusiasm and the amount of energy and the fact that people really do benefit and get something out of this experience. There's no way that you can't.

And so it's great to have you back. And thank you for taking the time to join us for the podcast. I told people we were having this conversation, and I could say, "Hey, we're having a conversation with somebody that's in television or somebody that's promoting a book or any —" I say LEGO, and they're like, "Oh my God, that's phenomenal. LEGO."

So you not only represent an iconic brand. You represent a brand that everybody knows and has experience with, LEGOs. So you get on a plane, you tell people you work for LEGO, I'm sure that you get story after story about their first LEGO set and the LEGO that they put together with their kids and all of this. OK, we're going to get to all of that, but let's start with your background and your career journey.

[00:02:25] Martin Urrutia: First of all, Bill, maybe you can see that, in the camera, I brought a LEGO version of me, so hopefully we look the same. Of course, I didn't put the glasses at this time. Let me fix my hair. But yes. This is our business card, by the way.

[00:02:38] Bill Thorne: That thing is fantastic.

[00:02:38] Martin Urrutia: It's amazing. Yes. Always see the smile.

[00:02:40] Bill Thorne: Oh, you can change the hair.

[00:02:43] Martin Urrutia: Something that probably you cannot do in the real world as easy, but yeah.

[00:02:47] Bill Thorne: That's giving you a groovy look.

[00:02:51] Martin Urrutia: There you go. There you go. But yeah, so thanks for having me. And the background is, I've been always in retail. I love retail. It's a fantastic industry. I spent half of my career in the agency side. Fantastic school. I love the learnings. Every day, different client, different challenges, different projects.

So it was a very intense course, but I always wanted to do the other side of the table, the other part of the job, the last part of being part of the brand. And I feel super privileged and honored to be part of the LEGO group. It's been now 14 years since I started.

And I've been on a journey of love after love. And as you say, when people, you tell them you work from LEGO, I feel honored because there's always that smile, remembering the childhood, remembering all the moments. And it's rewarding. It's amazing. It's a great place to work.

[00:03:42] Bill Thorne: How did you end up at LEGO? Were you just, one day, pick up the phone and you're like, "Hi, this is LEGO. What are you up to?"

[00:03:51] Martin Urrutia: Time to share the true story, the honest one. Yeah, it was completely unexpected. You're right. It just happened out of the blue. So of course, working in the agency side, being curious about being in the brand side, one day, and I'm going to tell for a second the story because it's interesting, we were watching — hopefully my wife is not listening — a very boring movie. Really bad. And I used to start, like many people, browsing in my computer. And there was a message in LinkedIn. LinkedIn, I don't know, 1.0 at that time, in 19 —

[00:04:20] Bill Thorne: 14 years ago.

[00:04:21] Martin Urrutia: Yeah, no. Yeah, 14, 2010. And I was invited to apply for a role as part of the retail team. Told my wife, "Can you put pause to the movie? This could have consequences." She didn't listen. She said yes and I applied for the job. And 12 weeks later, I was moving with my family with suitcases, two children, to Denmark, and just jump into the job. But of course, happy. And no regrets. I'm actually very proud of that invite and that boring movie.

[00:04:52] Bill Thorne: Yeah. I was going to say, you need to remember that movie so you can slip it in next time that you have to make a big decision. Distract the wife.

[00:04:59] Martin Urrutia: Exactly. Yes. But that's the story.

[00:05:01] Bill Thorne: She must have loved it. Now, what is your favorite part about working for LEGO? What has been a fun, memorable project that you've been a part of?

[00:05:11] Martin Urrutia: Yeah, it is fun because as a company, everyone that works in there, we embrace fun, creativity. That's the ethos of the brand. That is the way we are created. So with the team brainstorming, exploring new ideas, testing and learning, it's great.

And probably one of the projects that I'm most proud, it has been our personalization studio creation. Now we have this experience in many of the LEGO stores around the world, also in the U.S., in lego.com, and it's a place where you could come actually and create your own character, and then you get it in the store printed.

But it's one of my favorites because it started as an idea that our team has. And it was perceived as impossible at that time. How do you want to produce a LEGO minifigure in the store? What are you talking about? You need to go to the factories to do that, but everybody jump on board.

We got a lot of colleagues believing on the dream. So it's one of my favorite projects because it shows the fun, the innovation, but the trust and the caring for people to invest. And the other part is, when I mentioned the trust, I didn't feel that worry about not succeeding with the projects. So I was feeling comfortable, but also I love the risk, the adrenaline, and here we are couple of years later.

[00:06:24] Bill Thorne: It's pretty phenomenal. Who pitched the LEGO movie?

[00:06:27] Martin Urrutia: Don't know, but I would love to meet that person that did a great job. But yes, it's fantastic. How could you make a movie? Maybe.

[00:06:34] Bill Thorne: Out of LEGOs.

[00:06:35] Martin Urrutia: Yeah, out of LEGOs. But I work in the stores, and you were talking about a project. I am very, very happy and proud about a project that we did a few years ago. We created a reality show on what it takes to open a LEGO store. It was done in 2016, '17, and they follow us for six months with most of the activities that we need to do to open a store.

So they were visiting the site with the head of construction. They were visiting with me, a couple of vendors that will produce some of the elements of personalization studio. We actually show some of the things that didn't go as planned. So it was great, and it's incredible how you could create that reality show, one-hour show of what it takes to open a LEGO store. So if you find it somewhere in —

[00:07:18] Bill Thorne: Where would you find such a show?

[00:07:19] Martin Urrutia: It was in a UK broadcaster, but now it's available on demand in many of the platforms. I think it's called the LEGO Big Christmas.

[00:07:26] Bill Thorne: The LEGO Big Christmas.

[00:07:28] Martin Urrutia: Christmas. Because we were looking to open that store in London just before Christmas. And I won't tell you about the stress, but everything that you see there, it's fun, and it's realistic, but it shows also the passion of everybody. In the moment of opening, we couldn't cut the ribbon. I want to tell you more. Something happened, and it's just amazing, the story. So hopefully it'll be entertaining.

[00:07:48] Bill Thorne: All right. That's one way to get people to watch. I'm probably not going to be back in my hotel room until about 9 o'clock tonight, but at about 9:15, I will be looking for that show, because I want to see what happens to the red ribbon.

So it's interesting because you think of LEGOs, it's kind of ubiquitous with being a kid, that first LEGO set. Parents stepping on LEGOs, whatever. But there's got to be a constant point of view as it relates to balancing the innovation that you're doing, and yet staying true to the original timeless play aspiration of the brand. So how do you do all of the innovation and yet stay true?

[00:08:31] Martin Urrutia: Yes, and I'm working with the team, my team. We do a lot of innovation that happens in the stores. So I will say for us to stay true to that innovation in the store, it is looking back at the brand, the brand values, the brand personality. So making sure that it fits [Inaudible]. And one important point to me is the storytelling part of the innovation.

What is the role of this innovation? What do we want to say to people? What message is going to come across? So innovating for the sake of innovating, it's always interesting, but probably the largest impact is when you actually have a message. You have a value that you want to bring. So in our stores, for example, when we innovate, we ask ourself, what do we want people to remember? What do we want them to tell others?

So we will make sure that when you come to a LEGO store, you touch the LEGO brick. You play with the sets. And it's just not only digital. We need to make sure that the brand comes to life with those creativity factors in the physical space.

[00:09:25] Bill Thorne: Right. It's interesting because I think as you have developed the LEGO brand with, I don't want to say the Star Wars themes and things of that sort, you've moved from kids to kid adults that just can't wait for the next innovation as it relates to something that they can put together based off of what they've done in the past.

And again, I just go back to the fact that I think LEGO is just ubiquitous with fun, and it is ubiquitous with children, and it's ubiquitous with innovation, technology. It's quite amazing where you all have been, where you are, and where you're going to be. And so with that in mind, what are some of the things that you're looking at innovative-wise for 2025?

[00:10:07] Martin Urrutia: Yeah. Super important to continue the evolution of retail. In the past, retail was about e-com, it was about omnichannel. But it has evolved a lot. In the last years, it's been about the store experience, definitely looking into that. But I'm personally passionate and putting the focus on the storytelling part.

[00:10:27] Bill Thorne: Right, right, right, right.

[00:10:28] Martin Urrutia: In the stores, we want to tell the story about the brand, but also about the products, as you were saying. For example, a couple of months ago, we landed a spaceship in the center of the LEGO store in London, just literally put a LEGO spaceship, like huge size. So you could come in and feel that you are entering that world inside the set.

[00:10:45] Bill Thorne: Right.

[00:10:45] Martin Urrutia: And then you were exploring a couple of play experiences. You were taking a photo with an alien, with an astronaut. And we have anybody living in London that is listening to us or visiting there, a couple of weeks ago, we just opened up the largest LEGO flowers store in the world.

So in the center of the store, we have this flower shop that will remind you of the traditional flower shops with canopies and that kind of Italian romantic style. But then all the flowers are made of LEGO bricks and that part of our set. So we put the focus on the story that we want to tell. Innovation and digital and all that becomes an enhancer of the experience. But at the center of everything is making sure that we are sharp at engaging on the story that we want to tell people when they visit the store.

[00:11:30] Bill Thorne: This just leads to this question, I'm sorry. This is so elementary. So you built a spaceship, put it in the middle, how big is it?

[00:11:40] Martin Urrutia: Around 30 square meters inside the store.

[00:11:44] Bill Thorne: So who put that together?

[00:11:46] Martin Urrutia: Great team that you know I have, the people that work with me. And also, many other fantastic stakeholders that build the models, create the graphics, but also the leadership team that supports that idea. Just to tell that, we're planning to land a spaceship inside the store, that was great. And it's helping us a lot to experiment and try different things, but yeah, not an easy one to put it in, but also to take it out. Yeah.

[00:12:14] Bill Thorne: Okay, I'm going to get off the spaceship, but I can go on and on. Before I look for the series, I'm going to look for a picture of the spaceship in the LEGO store.

[00:12:25] Martin Urrutia: And the flower shop.

[00:12:26] Bill Thorne: You're giving me a lot to do tonight after we get done with all of these festivities here around the Big Show. So it's a business. And like any business, even though it's a fun business, you've got a job to do. You've got to create success for the company and for the brand. What keeps you up at night when you think about the future?

[00:12:43] Martin Urrutia: Yeah. I'm very often thinking on what is the next innovation, staying curious, staying risky. I will say taking risks. I'm often looking into inspiration from other categories, from other brands. Maybe that doesn't exist. What are the insights? What problem are we trying to solve? So it keeps me overnight staying curious and always trying to learn and try different things.

[00:13:07] Bill Thorne: Do you keep a journal next to your bed so that if you wake up in the middle of the night you write it down?

[00:13:12] Martin Urrutia: I should probably, but most of the ideas, will come in the last part of the sleep, just about to wake up. But the other part, it is talking about creativity. No surprise to people listening to us or watching us. Creativity is a muscle. Brainstorming is a muscle. So we try to constantly brainstorm, to constantly iterate, create.

And the other part is to accept that innovations don't happen in one iteration. Maybe they do sometimes, but to be open to say maybe at the end it's not going to look like that idea that I had at the middle of the night and be open to adjust, iterate, or even to park the idea that it doesn't fit with the future.

[00:13:50] Bill Thorne: That's pretty amazing. So, what's your favorite LEGO product?

[00:13:53] Martin Urrutia: I'm very excited. I have a few, of course, but if I put that into the latest one is the LEGO Botanical Collection. It's amazing to have flowers that will last forever, to also have flowers that you could adjust and combine and build yourself. And they look beautiful at home. That's the latest set that I built. I actually just got a couple of new ones last week, and we're going to start building flowers. Not maybe. They already built at home when I return from NRF.

[00:14:19] Bill Thorne: How old are your children?

[00:14:20] Martin Urrutia: They are now not children. They are still my boys, but they are 21 and 18.

[00:14:25] Bill Thorne: Do they still play with LEGOs?

[00:14:26] Martin Urrutia: Yes. Yes, of course. That's in the DNA, together with the Viking [Inaudible], as we were speaking before.

[00:14:33] Bill Thorne: Eventually they were so incredibly popular in school because they knew LEGOs.

[00:14:39] Martin Urrutia: Yes.

[00:14:39] Bill Thorne: And so if you look at the future of retail, what excites you most about that?

[00:14:45] Martin Urrutia: I'm excited to see the speed of the evolution and how everybody's trying to keep moving forward. So it is not an industry that stays still. There is always a new announcement, a new partnership, and a new technology. So it excites me, the role of technology, but also it excites me the next step that it will be, how do shoppers keep asking more from stores? They're expecting storytelling, expecting experiences, expecting fast service. So as a retailer, how do we cater and meet those challenges or expectations that they have?

[00:15:18] Bill Thorne: The online experience, I'm assuming that's pretty big for you guys as well.

[00:15:24] Martin Urrutia: It is, of course. We have a large reach with our lego.com shop, and it is exciting because we also want to make it special and offer the same experiences in the store, but on the other hand, differentiated, make great the things that you can only do in the digital space.

So we're looking into different experiences. We just recently launched the mini figure factory creation to online. So if you live in the U.S., coming to other places soon, you could create that. But we have a similar mindset. We imagine that the e-comm site, the online shop, it is a flagship store. So how does that digital flagship look like? And that's what motivates the team and the colleagues that are working on that space.

[00:16:03] Bill Thorne: So your store here in New York City, you get a lot of traffic there. It's interesting to me that I was talking to a friend of mine and he took his two children. The daughter wanted to go to American Girl, and the boy wanted to go to the LEGO store, and it was the reward for good behavior. And evidently the girl decided she wanted to just go to LEGO store too. So it's generational, but it's also boys and girls. Everybody enjoys it. And with the botanicals, I'm thinking that maybe you got something really good going there.

The best piece of advice that you've ever gotten from a mentor or a boss.

[00:16:41] Martin Urrutia: Yes. I think most of these moments happen early in the career. So when I was working during summers in high school, I had a French boss. I was living in Mexico by the beach by the way, and I had a French boss, who actually taught me to be brave and take risks. And of course, you need to know the level of the risks that you take, but he encouraged me to take the risks.

So what are you doing different this time? What are you going to try? And it really resonated with me. I love cooking by the way. When I cook, I try a new ingredient and I get a little bit off track of the recipe and see what happens. Sometimes it goes wrong. Well, you can always fix it and you put more butter and normally that fits everything. But I try different ways.

So that's the same in the professional side. So it is okay to leave that extra part of the work that you do, maybe at 10%, at 20%, and take a couple of risk, learn, try different ways, but also don't get frustrated or disappointed if it doesn't go as you plan. It's part of the risk taking. But in order to evolve, to make that recipe better, you need to try with new ingredients. So how do you bring that recipe and new ingredients into your professional side?

[00:17:46] Bill Thorne: Yeah. We call those honorable failures. You learn from them, but at least you try. So I think that in the leadership role that you have, you have to have a philosophy going into it. So what is your leadership philosophy? If I were to ask one of somebody that worked for you or with you, I don't know, I would say, "Hey, what's Martin's leadership philosophy?" What do you think that they would say?

[00:18:12] Martin Urrutia: That will be a good question to ask them, but I think based on what I'm hearing from them and the feedback and what I truly believe, it is on trusting the teams, trusting the people around you because there is a reason why they're part of the team. There is a reason why they're sitting, and listen to them.

To me, it's super important as a philosophy. So trust my team always maybe with questions and maybe suggestions, but the trust and the empowerment is there. And that's something that actually we have as a brand as the working culture, trust and mutual support.

[00:18:42] Bill Thorne: Have you ever met somebody that doesn't know what a LEGO is?

[00:18:45] Martin Urrutia: No. Everybody has a different way to look at it. Talking about early days, childhood moments with the family all the way to the latest, we have a lot of adults actually enjoying play again or mindfulness. And when you put it together, it really disconnects us from the world. When you build your flower set or you build a Formula 1 car, it's just amazing. You disconnected and start remembering those memories. So that is a lot of love that I feel, of course, for many people that I meet.

[00:19:19] Bill Thorne: That's fantastic. I know we're close on time, so I'm going ask you this one last question, if I may. You're doing so much and you've got such a great brand that you're doing it with, but what do you want to learn more about? What is something that you've learned even here that you've bookmarked in your notes about what you want to find out more about?

[00:19:39] Martin Urrutia: Yes. Definitely one of the areas that I see a lot is the AI technology.

[00:19:44] Bill Thorne: Of course.

[00:19:44] Martin Urrutia: Okay, you say, of course. Let me come to another one because that's the one probably you're going to hear from everybody. I actually like —

[00:19:52] Bill Thorne: Martin, my goal is to get through one of these conversations and have somebody not use the letters AI. But for the fact that they are, it just means it is top of mind for the industry. So, yes.

[00:20:04] Martin Urrutia: And by having that as a focus point, then you can decide if it's relevant, if it's ready, not ready, but you need to hear it. You need to learn. You need to be curious and know more about it. The other part that I actually got in my mind a lot is how more and more stores are seeing the role that they will have in the community.

So the stores as a community builder where people with similar passions will come together, runners getting a special shop on Wednesday nights. In LEGO, of course, we have some events where people are invited to come and play and build something around space or something about gaming, and the role of stores as a community, as social playing space, to me that's also interesting. And there's been a couple of presentations where some brands are speaking about that. Very interesting. Very, very  interesting.

[00:20:55] Bill Thorne: They may exist. I just don't know. But are there LEGO clubs? Have you ever heard of such a thing online or actually in store or in communities?

[00:21:04] Martin Urrutia: There is a lot. We have an official program that is the Insiders program where we'll share special announcement, news, products. But we have the adult fans of LEGO, and they are great. They have shows, and the creativity that they have, it's amazing.

And actually, for the stores, many of the products that we are selling in the store, they are designed by fans. We have a platform called ideas.lego.com. So if you come with a creation, you build something. Maybe now after you watch all these documentaries and you want to share with the world, you bring it to the platform.

Once you reach a certain amount of votes, then there is a committee that will look into the product. It will go through different processes. And if everything goes as planned, that could be the next LEGO set that we have for sale in the store around the world. So there is a lot of passion, and we love and embrace the creativity from adults and fans of any ages to the brand and the fun that they're having.

[00:22:01] Bill Thorne: I keep saying I've got one more question. I got one more question, but I do have one more question and I promise this will be it. At the headquarters of LEGO, do they have a LEGO history museum, or do they have something that tourists can go to and actually learn more about LEGO, its creation, and what's happening today?

[00:22:21] Martin Urrutia: Yeah, absolutely. We first of all have the LEGOLAND Park. That is the first one in the world. It was actually created by the founder of the company where he started to put some of the models in there. It's great. You can come and play and really engage with LEGO, but we also created a brand experience called the LEGO House.

And this will be a beautiful building. Actually, from the top, it looks like its built of LEGO bricks. Looks fascinating. And in there, you will have different areas where we will offer an experience on building your own dock or building your own mini figure. We have now a great experience that we'll invite people to have a sustainability challenge. So you need to help a couple of explorers around the world create something fun and new.

And the bricks and the LEGO builds that you do become the way for children to communicate the ideas. If they need to brainstorm, I've seen — that's a personal remark, of course — that many kids, and adults as well, it's easier to build it with LEGO bricks than to try to draw it.

So that is a great place. And then in the bottom part of the building, we have the LEGO vault. So you will have records, images, and samples of all, if not most of the LEGO sets that we have produced in the history. So you will be able to create your assortment, remember some of the sets that you build as a kid. So it's a must visit if you're a LEGO fan and build on Denmark.

[00:23:44] Bill Thorne: If you're going to Denmark, you've got to go to LEGO, no doubt.

[00:23:48] Martin Urrutia: And the LEGO House.

[00:23:48] Bill Thorne: And the LEGO House, for sure. Martin, it has truly been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for being a guest on Retail Gets Real.

[00:23:56] Martin Urrutia: Thanks for having me. Nice to meet you. And of course, keep building. Have fun. And yes, see you next time.

[00:24:02] Bill Thorne: And enjoy your time at the Big Show. And thank you all for listening to another episode of Retail Gets Real. You can find more information about this episode at retail gets real dot com. From Retail's Big Show in New York City, I'm Bill Thorne. This is Retail Gets Real. Thanks for listening, and until next time.