LEGO was created in Billund, Denmark

Clackity, clackity, clackity goes my vacuum cleaner. Oops, another piece of Lego gets sucked into the great oblivion. No big deal, I tell myself; the kids have lots and lots of Lego, one piece here and there will not make a dent in their collection. While this is true, it got me thinking; just how much Lego do we vacuum or sweep up every year? I work at a toy store in Courtenay, B.C., Canada and I have to listen daily to customer laments on the costliness of the world’s favorite toy. If every parent was like myself; preoccupied with the minutia required to keep a family of 4 on track, one little yellow brick is nothing in the grand scheme of things; but is it really?

How many thousands of dollars are we sucking up every year in a desperate attempt to stay on top of the professional messmakers we call children? The first step in answering this question starts with myself. I estimate, conservatively, I vacuum about 5 pieces of Lego per year. I have two kids, so that is 2.5 pieces of Lego per child, per year in my house. The latest Statistics Canada data available (2006) tells me there are 3,889,305 kids between the ages of 5 and 14 in Canada. So; assuming 2.5 pieces of Lego are done away with per child, we are looking at 9,723,262.5 pieces of Lego vacuumed up every year in Canada!

Almost 10 million pieces of Lego are vacuumed or swept per year!!! What does this mean for our collective pocketbooks? Well, each 1 x 1 square of Lego weighs approximately .55 grams (0.2 of an ounce). Most vacuum cleaners can handle a 1 x 1 square without too much complaint. I have a Dyson, which will suck the white off rice; so it can devour 2 x 2 bricks with ease, but I digress. I have done the math so you don’t have to. We, as Canadians suck up 5,348 kilograms (11,790 pounds) of Lego yearly. A quick trip to eBay told me that the going price for used Lego is about $6.83 US per pound (averaged over 9 completed listings). That is over $80,000 US dollars that we squander away collectively in Canada on this innocuous,  plastic brick!

Our neighbor to the south has many, many more professional messmakers. According to 2009 US Census data, there are 40,934,306 kids between the ages of 5 and 14 in the United States. American families vacuumed up 102,335,765 pieces of Lego in 2009! Assuming  1 x 1 squares (at 0.2 of an ounce) were the nasty little culprits, 123,827 pounds (give or take) were vacuumed up in the United States in 2009 representing over $845,738 US dollars worth of Lego.

Food for thought….

I have a Facebook account; as do most of the people I know. It is a wonderful social networking tool; a way for me to know the whereabouts and activities of extended family members. I am kept up to date on births, anniversaries, birthdays and other special occasions in peoples’ lives. I am compared with and ranked against all of my friends, I am sent drinks and quizzes and I have even had family arguments through Facebook. All of these things are stored, documented and could be sold to interested (and supposedly responsible) third parties. Not only does Facebook collect the information about you from what you enter; it can also gather information about you from other sources on the Internet. WTF?? Have a look at Facebook’s Terms of Use and Privacy Statement. Here is an excerpt: “We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile.” Despite this disclaimer, Facebook says that it will not sell any information that it gathers to any third party; I suppose the disclaimer is so that they can leave their options open for future opportunities.

A potential area of concern for young people should be how their current postings and activities will be viewed by potential employers and colleges when they become adults and venture into the world. It is difficult to remove things from the Internet once they are out there, and anyone with a computer can Google you to learn more about that beer bong party with the topless girls at the lake when you were 16. It used to be that you could delete your Facebook account, but your file would still remain in their system, but now, you are able to call Facebook and have your records erased. If you are concerned at all, contact Facebook and confirm that any record of your activity on their website has been erased. Be sure to ask your friends and family not to tag you in any photographs; especially embarrassing or compromising ones. Even though you may not have an account, doesn’t mean that your name won’t show up if you are tagged in a picture. On the very day that I wrote this article, Google News reported on the launch of Facebook Connect, an expansion that will make Facebook accessible to software makers who can use member information (with permission) to benefit their websites. Last year Facebook really took off when thousands of software applications were exclusively built for Facebook users. This new project is an expansion of this concept with tighter security restrictions. Last year, Facebook shut down 1000 applications for security violations and subsequently are instituting tighter controls over these applications.

I will continue to use my Facebook account. I like social networking, knowing what my friends and family are up to, and having an online event calendar chock a block full of invitations. It is an incredibly powerful tool for keeping connections alive. Just make sure to ask yourself if you are posting information that you wouldn’t mind anyone to read in the present or future and as with many things, read the disclaimers and policy statements.

Obviously they are related and can’t really exist without each other. In the marketing process, a need in the market is identified and a product is designed to fulfill that need and advertising is used to get the message to the consumer. Selling is the last step in the process; delivering the product to the customer. It is considered a “pull” approach. Marketing pulls the consumer to the store to purchase the product. Sales is focussed on convincing the customer to purchase a ready made product. The focus in the sales approach is to move inventory, not to identifiy individual customer needs and custom make a product to match their needs. Sales operates on a “push” approach; pushing the product on the customer.

There is an insinuated higher value placed on the marketing approach as it is more customer focussed, but selling plays an important role in the overall marketing strategy. For example, if you are launching a brand new product such as the plasma car that kids ride, consumers may be interested in buying based on advertisements that they see, but a skilled salesperson is able to present features, advantages and benefits of the product. Very few of these ride on toys would have been sold without the knowledgeable sales people available to answer customer questions and solve problems.

So, in summary, sales pushes an already existing product and marketing recognizes a need to be filled and creates a product to serve that need. The picture featured here shows an Xbox360. Video game retailers need to be very knowledgeable sellers of their products. I love my Xbox360.

I have chosen to answer this question in terms of the biggest amount of scheduled passengers. Southwest Airlines in the United States serves a relatively small geographic region. In 2007, they carried almost 102,000 passengers. In fact, the top 4 airlines in terms of scheduled passengers are all American: Southwest, American, Delta and United. Southwest’s main terminal is in Las Vegas, but the airline services almost every state in the Continental U.S. including those in the Eastern U.S.

American Airlines has the largest fleet of planes at 655 aircraft, followed by Air France/KLM at 589 aircraft. Ryanair, an Irish airline is headquartered at London’s Stansted terminal and serves the most international passengers. Ryanair has a notorious reputation for poor customer service, inappropriate and offensive advertising, and discrimination against handicapped passengers. They have been forced to pay damages in many cases. The executive staff of Ryanair seem to thumb their noses at attempts to tame their advertising or change their policies.

Gross refers to a sum of money given to another person; typically as payment for labor, without any taxes or other deductions taken away. For example, if you earn a salary of $40,000 per year, this amount is your gross earnings, but because we live in a community, we give some of our wages to help pay for the infrastructure of the community we live in. Without taxes, we wouldn’t have roads to drive to work on. If we don’t pay a small amount to ensure that we still receive some money in the event that we are unemployed, then we have no protection in times of crisis. The amount of money that we actually receive on our pay checks after taxes, unemployment and other deductions have been made represents our net earnings; the amount of money that we actually get to keep.

In terms of a corporation, gross earnings refer to the total amount of money that has come into the business over a defined period of time. Net earnings are the actual profit made once all expenses have been paid such as labor, cost of goods sold, overhead like rent and utilities and other expenses.