For many parents of young children Lego is a go to christmas gift which almost all kids enjoy. However this Christmas season this staple gift is going to be much harder to find as Lego has decided to stop shipping their products to independent Canadian retailers until 2015 due to a shortage of Lego. This is extremely worrying for many Small Business toy store owners as for many Lego sales account for at least 30% of their total sales. This is the first time Lego has ever done this, and while owners dont know what to expect, majority are bracing for the worst! Already some businesses have had to cancel orders which they had made based on incoming shipments.

While Lego is blaming the shortage of Lego on the wildly popular Lego movie, I feel as though this could not happen to such a large and experienced company like Lego, and therefore this is simply a marketing ploy by Lego choosing to reduce supply in hopes of increasing demand for their products. Whether or not this will work is impossible to predict, however what is possible to predict is the fact that during this holiday season many Canadian Toy Store owners will be struggling without new inventory from Lego.