Who is the distributor of LEGO?

Answer 1

LEGO doesn't deal well with small retailers anymore. It used to until around 2000 or so. From what I know, Lego handles its own distribution, and recently (ish) has restricted the availability of MANY items to small retailers in favor of large scale retailers, in particular Wal*Mart, Toys R Us, and Target (in the US).

I've heard that effectively Lego put in a mandate to its marketing staff to stop spending so much time on small retailers. Their staff had been putting in roughly the same amount of time on small retailers as large ones-- now the attention and availability for a retailer is more proportional to the amount of money that they spend on Lego.

I know small retailers basically have a very restricted catalog to order from, and only in limited quantities. At one point (not sure if this is still the case), they also had to buy "package deals" to a certain extent. That is, small retailers would be required to buy at least SOME of certain product lines, even if the retailer didn't want them.