The LEGO BrickLink Designer Program Not Available To Most Of Asia

Thursday, July 8th, 2021 by Brickfinder

Actually, the ONLY country that The Bricklink Designer Program is available to is South Korea. Everyone one else this side of the globe is out of luck.

I was super excited when I heard that the second Bricklink Designer program was under way and I stayed up to join the crowdfunding exercise only to find out that, Singapore, the country I reside in was not one of the shipping options that was available. 

In fact, a whole host of countries where shipping was previously available like Japan and Hong Kong, were missing from the list and honestly, this is a huge step backwards for the program.

I attended a roundtable interview with Bricklink’s CEO, Marvin Park, and he has this to say about the reason behind why these countries were left out.

“Bricklink needs to be tax compliant. It is not an automatic process nor is it a money issue. It is more about dealing with the government’s tax bureau. We are told that we are not ready yet in those countries” ~ Marvin Park, CEO Bricklink

Which brings me to wonder how is it that countries like Japan who already have their own internal Shop@Home, are still not able to have these sets shipped since they should already be tax compliant as LEGO has an official online store there.

The answer to that was because Bricklink sets undergo a different certification process than official LEGO sets and they do not meet the requirements of those countries, hence the omission.

So essentially what they are telling us is that when LEGO bought over Bricklink, the online brick marketplace acquired all the trappings of a multi-national corporation (MNC) which they were not expecting.

When I asked what would be done about it, this was the response:

“We are trying our best to expand the country list for next time”

Which basically translates to “you guys are shit out of luck” for this round. This will just drive more sales to the scalpers as there is no way for most Asian AFOLs to get their hands on these sets which just go against their own core values that we’ve heard them profess.

And that leads me to the other pain point was the five sets limit per customer that was allowed. This was the breakdown of the percentage of customers who purchased the Castle set:

• 75% – 1 set
• 15% – 2 sets
• 3% – 3 sets
• 3% – 4 sets
• 4% – 5 sets

With the statistics, it does show that out of the 10,000 sets available for the Castle, only 25% of them bought more than 1 set. It is kind of hard to pin the lack of sets solely on scalpers as since they limited the regions that the Castle set was available to.

You can read the official statement below where LEGO addresses the other problems faced with this round of the Bricklink Designer Program.

Honestly, nothing much of the situation is going to change, just hope that they will finally start to listen to the word on the ground rather than relying on statistics and surveys.

---

BrickLink’s response to feedback regarding the BrickLink Designer Program Round 1 of Crowdfunding

Thank you for the incredible interest you showed in the BrickLink Designer Program. We have been blown away by the response. As with any new endeavor, some things went well, and others don’t go to plan.

What worked

Based on our first round of crowdfunding, we believe the BrickLink Designer Program has strong potential. Your interest exceeds all our expectations. The portfolio of products is strong, and the designers are a joy to work with. We are looking forward to preparing for rounds 2 and 3.

However, there are a few things we need to address urgently with Round 1.

What needs to be improved

Thank you to everyone who has shared comments and feedback with us over the past week. While we understand many of you are frustrated, we are grateful for your quick and clear input.

There are four areas we want to address:

Site performance; Limited production of 5,000 units of each set & ordering glitch; Order limits of 5 sets per customer; Shipping limited to countries serviced by LEGO.com; Site performance & server capacity

When the crowdfunding went live on Thursday July 1 traffic to the site overloaded BrickLink’s servers. This meant some users couldn’t place their orders in time and for many, the site ground to a halt. We apologize for any disappointment this caused. We are currently reviewing server capacity.

Limited production and ordering glitch

The limit of 5,000 units per set was based on the AFOL Designer Program run in 2019. For that

release, we produced 2,500 sets which didn’t all sell out. We obviously underestimated the appeal of the Bricklink Designer Program sets and because of that, we will double the limit for future releases.

The high level of demand was compounded by the site performance issues. An ordering glitch meant that people were able to pre-order 5,000 additional Castle in the Forest sets, which means we’ve received orders for 10,000 sets.

We have talked to many of you in the community about how to address this and have decided on the following actions:

Produce 10,000 of the Castle in the Forest sets so we can deliver to everyone who ordered.

Re-opening pre-ordering for round 1 on August 3^rd to allow the four projects Kakapo, Great

Fishing Boat, Sheriff’s Safe and Pursuit of Flight to also sell up to 10,000 sets.

Increase production for Crowdfunding rounds 2 and 3 to 10,000 each to meet demand.

We appreciate that this approach may not satisfy everyone, but we had to balance meeting users’ expectations with offering a fair outcome, so all designers had the chance to sell the same number of sets and the potential to dilute some of the exclusivity that comes with doubling the number of set available. We hope you understand.

Increasing production will delay shipping and future rounds of crowdfunding. Since we are doubling the production run, the additional 5,000 sets for Round 1 will be shipped in June 2022, as opposed to January 2022. This will also delay the release of Rounds 2 & 3. The final plan for this will be communicated at a later stage.

If, because of these changes, you wish to cancel the sets you’ve pre-ordered, please contact LEGO Customer Service.

Order limits of five per customer

We initially set the maximum order quantity at five per customer. Unfortunately, we saw a very small number of opportunistic customers hoarding sets and re-selling them for inflated prices.

We’re disappointed by this as it wasn’t our intention to enable such behavior. We want everyone to have an opportunity to get a hold of a set, so going forward, we will set a maximum order limit of 1 set per customer. This will apply from when we re-open Round 1 to additional orders and to future crowdfunding rounds.

It’s important to point out that 75% of orders for Castle in the Forest were for one set– so we’d

like to thank you for being considerate of other fans.

Shipping limited to LEGO Shop countries

We have decided to sell BrickLink Designer Program sets through the LEGO.com shop to give you a smooth shipping and support process. Unfortunately, this also limits the countries to which we can ship. For now, we plan to continue to use LEGO.com and not offer additional shipping destinations.

In summary

For Round 1, we will increase the number of sets available from 5,000 to 10,000. Castle in the Forest has already reached this amount. The four other sets will re-open to additional pre-ordering on August 3^rd, but it will not be possible to pre-order additional Castle in the

Forest sets. The additional production run will delay in shipping and release dates for crowdfunding rounds 2 and 3.

All future pre-orders will have a quantity limit of 1.

Unfortunately, in the current LEGO.com setup we are not able to ship to additional countries.

Again, we apologize for any disappointment and hope that the steps outlined above go some way to address the concerns raised.

Thank you for your patience, feedback and support for the BrickLink Designer Program. We look forward to building a better experience moving forward.

Sincerely,

The BrickLink Team