What can BrickLink, the eBay of plastic bricks, tell us about Lego's future corporate challenges?
Lego tried and failed to make oil-free bricks. So what's next? Millions of people buy, sell and resell Lego through BrickLink - a kind of marketplace for bricks and brick designs. So what can the eBay of bricks tell us about Lego's future challenges?Lego's fundamental business model is it buys ABS plastic for about $1 a pound and sells it back to us for about 50 times that.I buy and sell new and used Lego by the individual piece. Currently, I'm down to 1.965mn pieces.
So at one point Lego was the largest manufacturer of tyres in the world based on the number of tyres that they were producing. It's also no longer just about children. All over the world there are loads of resellers buying and selling bricks, Minifigures, and whole sets, and plenty of adult customers as well for some really big sets, like cars or architecture.
Was a Lego fan for a few years when I started. And during lockdown I picked it up, so then I started selling it and then realised there was quite a lot of money in it. So since then, I've kind of kept it up, and it's just got bigger and bigger each year. BrickLink is a site that you can go to to get used Lego sets, Lego parts, new Lego sets that people bought and want to resell. It's a sprawling kind of eBay for Lego.
It eventually grew to what it is now, which is the largest online database outside of the Lego Group itself. Lego's revenues are more than 50 per cent bigger than Mattel and Hasbro, but it's a fraction of the size of Disney. And when you speak to Lego executives and the founding family, you can hear their ambition is getting bigger. They've got Legoland theme parks, stores, and apps. So how far can they take the brick?
The Lego movies are a playful way of showing both kids and adults using the bricks, but there's big business behind this, too. People really want a specific brick, a specific colour, a certain Minifigure, and they're prepared to pay for it. There's a lot of scepticism in the reseller community as to what Lego really wants to do with BrickLink. Do they want the customer data? Do they want to develop it? Or do they want to essentially shut down something that had become competition?
BrickLink represents a challenge for Lego in terms of bricks that already exist, but Lego also faces a big sustainability issue with the new bricks it's producing. Their bricks are made from plastic, which makes them highly durable. The last time I visited their headquarters they gave me this brick from the 1950s, which still fits perfectly together with this one from 2024. But they still have a big sustainability issue to solve.
We want children to inherit a healthy planet. We're determined to play our part in making that happen by, one, making our products and packaging more sustainable. That means overcoming some unique challenges. Materials must be durable. They must also meet the highest standards of safety, quality, and precision.
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