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Bricklink suspends Marketplace operations in 35 countries
- colechristensen 10mo agono explanation?
- gishh 10mo agoUmm. I guess not? > Six years ago, I wrote that it was a terrible idea for LEGO to acquire Bricklink and revisiting some of my thoughts I expressed then, it sure seems like there’s some dodgy stuff happening behind the scenes. > To be fair, I acknowledge that there may be compliance challenges operating in some of these countries, where things like local laws, logistics, import restrictions etc may make it difficult for LEGO/Bricklink to do their business there, but surely there could’ve been a better way to communicate this, or invite community feedback instead of turning the whole site off in 2 weeks.
- jacquesm 10mo agoBricklink was acquired from the mother of the guy (who died) that started it by some asian 'entrepreneur' who then turned around and sold it to Lego, whose only long term interest always was shutting it down. The secondary market hurts their sales for new sets, or so they believe.
- pimlottc 10mo agoWhy the scare quotes for 'entrepreneur'? From what I can tell, the purchaser was a legitimate and very successful software publisher, one of the richest men in South Korea. Furthermore, he ran the site for 6 years before selling it to Lego, actively developing new features like the free Studio design software. It sounds like he only sold it due to personal financial issues after a failed software deal [0]. I agree that Lego owning BrickLink created a big conflict of interests but there doesn't seem to be anything shady about how they acquired it. 0: https://pulse.mk.co.kr/news/english/9084691 https://pulse.mk.co.kr/news/english/9084691
- teruakohatu 10mo ago> The secondary market hurts their sales for new sets, or so they believe. I think the secondary market drives sales. People need to believe that the overpriced sets they are purchasing, never open, and stash in the attic will make them a fortune on the secondary market one day.
- jmonty900 10mo agoEven if there were significant challenges in some countries, certainly other countries on this list didn't deserve the 2 week treatment. Lego's actions here are very sketchy. "We appreciate your understanding, - The BrickLink Team" Understanding of what? They didn't describe the situation that lead to their decision to unilaterally apply the same treatment to all of these countries.
- jacquesm 10mo agoCorpspeak should be illegal. It so pisses me off that companies always harm your interests while telling you it is to serve you better. Clearly it's not, stop lying.
- georgefrowny 10mo agoI don't think it's a new thing - no always has been.jog please - but the older I get the more it seems that the relationship between companies and customers (and especially non-customers in the receiving end of some externality) is really quite a lot more adversarial than the happy-clappy magic market doctrine makes out.
- gedy 10mo agoI've been a member for 25 years (yikes, since it was Brickbay) - I'm not sure why Lego company wouldn't have the resources to handle this compared to the prior smaller company.
- jacquesm 10mo agoBecause it is not to their advantage. I suspect they always bought it to shut it down and this is just the opening moves.
- RGamma 10mo agoWatching Held der Steine cured me of all notions that LEGO(R) still has any interest other than milking their brand/reputation. McKinsey leadership will do that to a company, I guess. Thankfully there's many good (and compatible) competitors now, that get you much more bang for the buck. I'm not that deep into LEGO(R), but it feels they have already lost a substantial portion of goodwill in the power user community, which may be contagious. I certainly wouldn't buy or recommend it to anyone anymore (except used perhaps).
- OgsyedIE 10mo agoGreenland is an unusual entry on the list given the nature of Lego as a firm.
- mrweasel 10mo agoThat one might be there for other reasons. Shipping to Greenland is generally pretty hard. Nuuk is easy enough, but other parts of Greenland aren't getting packages delivered for the rest of the year. We had to deal with cut of dates for Christmas being mid October. Maybe that has changed in later years, I haven't checked. Israel also feels a little off. I doubt that that's there for the same reason as e.g. Taiwan or Kazakhstan. Or San Marino, that's not there due to war, sanctions, shipping or trademark violations. It seems like they had a number of reasons to disallow businesses in various countries and now they're blocking them as one big chunk to avoid uncomfortable answers about individual countries.
- makeitdouble 10mo agoI get why for some of these countries, but Brazil for instance doesn't look like complicated situation or a small market in any shape of form ? Is anyone finding relevant political or regulatory patterns in the country list ? Direct link to the list: https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2687 https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2687
- kasey_junk 10mo agoImports into Brazil are pretty complicated, but I don’t know why you’d shut down an existing operation.
- chhxdjsj 10mo ago[flagged]
- jacquesm 10mo agoAnd paid them a pittance.
- decremental 10mo ago[dead]
- yhhbbkkhh 10mo ago…what “idea”?
- chhxdjsj 10mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Page#Kiddicraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Page#Kiddicraft
- gblargg 10mo agoSpecifically: > Ole Kirk Christiansen and his son Godtfred became aware of the Kiddicraft brick after examining a sample, and possibly drawings, given to them by the British supplier of the first injection moulding machine they had purchased. Realising their potential, Ole copied the Kiddicraft brick and in 1949 marketed his own version, The Automatic Binding Brick, that became the Lego brick in 1953.
- bcraven 10mo agoFurthermore, _In 1987, his widow stated, "He died before Lego brought out the product in Britain. He didn't know about it."_
- culi 10mo agoAnd now they're upset at lepin bricks because modern lepin bricks have superceded LEGO in quality AND price
- baiwl 10mo ago>To put this into perspective, the total combined population of these countries exceed 2.5 billion, or just about 30% of Earth’s population which is wild. Doesn't look like anybody can make 35% of their revenue from those countries though, does it.
- jacquesm 10mo agoYou'd be surprised where Lego buyers from bricklink are from. When I was active there I got sales from just about all over the world.
- BrenBarn 10mo agoMaybe not but it does include some countries with very large economies.
- hoherd 10mo agoSure, but sellers in those countries found the service to be very valuable. The framing of this situation as being beneficial to the cooperation and detrimental to the consumer feeds the narrative of the Evil Corporation, which is sad. It's really unfortunate that LEGO acquired Bricklink, and then did this, but it's such a common storyline.
- jacquesm 10mo agoMake no mistake: Lego makes a great product but they are an evil corporation. They have been so from the day they started making bricks (they stole the design, the marketing content and even the boxes), they continued when they sued everybody and their dog for doing the same thing that they themselves did, only much worse, and finally they did it again when they acquired Bricklink and started merging accounts with the Lego website. And probably many times in between when they created incompatibilities between older and newer sets just to drive sales.
- PostOnce 10mo agoLego... incompatibilities? Isn't compatibility a huge part of the draw of Lego? I've never heard of incompatibilities, what are they? The only problem I've noticed product wise is there are now mold defects after they started adding recycled plastic, only one or two minor (visual surface) imperfections per box, but before, there were none.
- altairprime 10mo agoIs this due to the same payment processor issue that was impacting Steam-PayPal users earlier this year? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44891570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44891570
- dawnerd 10mo agoThey use PayPal so probably. I don’t think there’s anything nefarious from the Lego side, just some weird legal decision.
- dhruvrrp 10mo agoSome really big/rich markets on the list (Brazil, India, ME..). I don't think LEGO is big in most of those countries (at least not in India), so they might be trying to slow down the secondary market in order to grow sales for new products.
- embedding-shape 10mo agoI wonder what the story behind this action is? It's surprisingly short to the shutdown, and they seem to indicate they wanted to keep those markets open, as otherwise I feel like they wouldn't falsely give people hope they might open it up again: > We will review this decision regularly, and we hope to be able to reopen the BrickLink Marketplace to LEGO® fans in these countries in the future. Shutting it down in (almost) the entire South America doesn't feel like it makes financial sense, can't be such a small market that it wouldn't be worth keeping it open.
- aunty_helen 10mo agoLooking at the list of countries, living in one, and knowing how much the west is cracking down on money control. This reeks of anti-money laundering controls.
- cyanydeez 10mo agoProbably. Know your customer is eaaiest to find noncompliance.
- kijin 10mo agoHow would a criminal enterprise use Bricklink to launder money? Buy expensive Lego sets with dirty dollars, and sell them locally for clean money? There's certainly an opportunity for arbitrage there, but it sounds awfully complicated for a money laundering scheme. Not being sarcastic, just curious whether there's something special about Lego or whether they're just passing along the restrictions imposed by their payment processor.
- shermantanktop 10mo agoI worked on a product based on micropayment transactions - most less than a dollar, and we supported tenths of a cent - and money laundering was a constant concern. The baddies out there are numerous, dedicated, highly adaptable, and willing to throw mass volume at a small % opportunity.
- linohh 10mo agoNo matter what, as soon as you offer relaying or negotiating a relay of money between users, people will find a way to use it for money laundering.
- makeitdouble 10mo agoI'd assume using dirty money to buy blocks at an inflated price from a cooperating vendor(usually the buyer themselves) would be enough ? The vendor's money would be "clean" from an outsider's perspective.
- AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
- pftburger 10mo agoThis is A/B testing. Lego owns bricklink, so they shutter it in a few countries, see how it impacts sales, decide from there
- shermantanktop 10mo agoSource?
- helsinkiandrew 10mo agoThe site below posted a comment in a Reddit post that seemed to explain the decision: >We don’t currently have the resources to support Marketplace operations in these areas at the same level as everywhere else,” the statement reads https://www.brickfanatics.com/lego-is-closing-bricklink-in-35-countries/ https://www.brickfanatics.com/lego-is-closing-bricklink-in-3...
- orphea 10mo agoNo? The statement is a usual meaningless corpo speak, it doesn't explain anything.
- justinclift 10mo agoProbably means they've been told to reduce headcount.
- littlecranky67 10mo agoAs for why, my bet is to prevent "counterfeit" (as Lego would call them) lego parts being shipped by vendors. They target low-income countries, as it is profitable there to import China-made bricks and sell them on Bricklink to make a living. As a background, there are plenty of chinese lego alternatives, operating mostly legally in the west as the lego patent has expired long ago. Brands such as Mouldking, Cobi, Bluebrixx, CaDa, etc. are available here in Germany even in retail stores and online, and it is perfectly legal to sell "alternative" bricks. Cobi itself manufactures all of its part in the EU (mostly Poland) and creates original designs (mostly War-themed models such as tanks, fighting jets etc. as Lego does not do those).
- Freak_NL 10mo agoIs this conjecture or actually done? Bricklink Buyers expect Lego bricks, including the trademark on each stud, so any shop sending anything not produced by the Lego Group, but with the trademark on it, would be sending actual counterfeit products, not third party bricks. Buying actual Lego bricks produced in whichever Lego factory and reselling them is not counterfeiting.
- littlecranky67 10mo agoIt is mere conjecture, I have no datapoints to support this. I would assume, since Bricklink sends worldwide, that you would not open a support case when buying a couple of $ worth of parts if they are non-original. The effort of return shippment probably not worth it. I could also imagine that you can buy china-manufactured parts that carry the lego logo.
- em-bee 10mo agoi highly doubt that. i have never seen a counterfeit lego set with an actual lego logo. even in china that would not be legal. someone would have to specifically target bricklink shops to sell such bricks. if you get fake bricks you might not open a support case to get the bricks replaced, but you would complain and report that shop. with enough reports coming in someone would look into that. so i feel that this is unlikely to happen. at the worst case it's someone clueless, mixing in alternative brands by accident. but i expect someone doing that intentionally would be shut down quickly by reputation only. i mean, shops get closed simply because they get to many complaints about taking to long to ship.
- huflungdung 10mo ago[dead]