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The company is formed
In 1884 Ivar married Sissa Persdotter and they moved to Boalt, a small village outside Osby in southern Sweden. They lived on a small farm, but most important of all it had a small workshop for making baskets. Ivar expanded his range by buying up other goods made in the area, wrought iron from Loshult and kitchen crafts from Visselfjärda. He also began importing oleographs from Breslau, in those days a German city nowadays Polish. All these products he sold in Denmark. However, his most important product was one of his own woodchip baskets.

“The handle sells the basket”
In 1890 Ivar Bengtsson published his first catalogue. Ivar had started to sell more and more in the areas north of Skåne in Sweden, and Denmark was no longer the most important market. His wife Sissa and children, three sons and a daughter, worked in the home to strengthen the baskets Ivar had bought by adding extra chips in the handle. This made the baskets last longer, and Ivar coined the slogan "The handle sells the basket". BRIO's focus on quality products had begun. Ivar labelled his baskets with the text "Ivar Bengtsson's Basket Factory Boalt".

The BRothers Ivarsson Osby
Although there were many wealthy people living in the forest districts around Osby, most were living in poverty. Between 1840 and 1930 over a million Swedes emigrated, mainly to North America. For the vast majority, poverty was the reason they sought their fortune on the other side of the Atlantic. One day Ivar's and Sissa's two eldest sons, Viktor and Anton, came to their parents and told them that they planned to emigrate to America. Ivar and Sissa were dismayed, and Sissa found a way of keeping their sons in Sweden. Her idea was that the sons should take over the firm. In 1908 Ivar and Sissa officially transferred the company to their three sons, Victor, Anton and Emil, and in the following year they registered the new company as Bröderna Ivarsson Osby, (the Brothers Ivarsson Osby).

BRIO opened a new phase in its history in 1930 when the bold BRIO trademark was painted onto the side of two wooden cars distributed by the company. The development of the BRIO brand would become key to the growth and development of the company over the next 70 years. Some five years later the company lent its name to a line of baby carriages manufactured by another Osby firm but distributed by BRIO. By the mid-1930s, when BRIO was officially incorporated as a limited liability corporation, the company was employing 150 people and had achieved annual sales of SEK 4.3 million. BRIO's product line had begun to focus on the wooden toys and baby carriages that would become the core of the company's business.

Although BRIO had been placing its brand name on products distributed by the company since the 1930s, it was only after World War II that BRIO began its own manufacturing concern with the opening of a baby carriage factory in 1947. By the late 1950s the postwar baby boom had come into full swing and BRIO baby carriages became one of the best-selling brands in the country. This success was cemented in 1959 with the introduction of the Sylvana model, the first baby carriage in the world to be equipped with a fully-welded collapsible frame.

BRIO toys received worldwide recognition with the introduction of the BRIO Labyrint in 1946. The wooden maze toy, with its distinctive tilting box, was distributed throughout the world during the 1950s and 1960s and was largely responsible for the original dissemination of the BRIO brand name. Following the success of Labyrint, BRIO began to expand its line of wooden toys for the domestic and international markets. The 1950s saw the introduction of Bygg-BRIO, a wooden construction toy that was the predecessor to BRIO MEC, and, most significantly, the BRIO Wooden Railway, which was to become the best-selling wooden railway in the world and BRIO's most popular toy ever.

In 1916, the 25-year-old carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen took over te workshop in Billund from Steffen Pedersen. Ole Kirk was trained in 1911 as a carpenter and cabinetmaker, and he had worked in both Germany and Norway, he had saved so much that he could call himself the owner of Billund Maskinsnedkeri Tømrer.

In 1934, two years after he had re-started the manufacture of wood products and wooden toys, the now 43-year-old Ole Kirk was a prestigious man who was responsible for the construction of a church, dairies, mission houses, many farm buildings and residential dwellings. He was a lender, and its last activity, toy production, by the author of an article from that time regarded as suitable for export. This jack was impressed that he saw his workshop twice destroyed throug fire, and again built up from the ground to a number of buildings that still exist in Billund.

The connection between BRIO and LEGO.

It could be that LEGO and BRIO had a license to sell each others products in the years 1940/1950. The objective could be that LEGO after Denmark wanted to conquer  several Scandinavian countries  with its wooden toys. But as mentioned, this is not based on identifiable facts, but on an assumption. Below are the articles that we found in both collections of toys as well.

Back in the day it was common to copy each other. The knowledge of copy right protection was not widely known (toys and the making of toys was considered simple and not of so high status in the beginning of the 1900´s)

It is known that BRIO had a collaboration with TEKNO but there is noting known about a collaboration with LEGO. TEKNO bought toys from BRIO and was allowed then to use their own logo on the BRIO toys. Perhaps BRIO and LEGO had a collaboration also. The people who made these type of agreements are no longer with us and can sadly not answer this. Sure BRIO has produced plastic toys also. In the middle of the 1900´s no one was ashamed of saying BRIO plastic and wooden toys.

BRIO pulldog 'PLUTO'

LEGO pulldog 'PLUTO'

BRIO car with driver

LEGO car with driver

BRIO toysoldier

LEGO toysoldier

BRIO plastic Farmall H tractor

LEGO plastic Farmall H tractor

BRIO plastic and wooden construction toy BRIO MEC

LEGO plastic and wooden construction toy BILOfix