The first round of Bricklink’s Designer Program was mired in controversy, with sets selling out almost instantly, and purchase limits not put into place which led to many fans missing out on the first round of crowdfunded sets.
Bricklink will be put out an official statement soon, but here’s the gist of the announcement, addressing some of the major issues caused by Round 1.
- Round 1 will be re-opened on 3 August 2021: with an additional 5,000 sets being made available for sets that have been crowdfunded except for the Castle In The Forest
- Additional sets for Round 1 will be shipped in June 2022. Original run of 5,000 sets will still be shipped in January 2022
- Change to purchase limits: Instead of a limit of 5 sets per account, the limit will be changed to 1 per account
- No change to availability: If you are unlucky enough to be in a country that couldn’t access Round 1, you’re still out of luck
- Regional caps will remain in place
- Rounds 2 and 3 will be delayed
The re-opening of Round 1 will still occur on the Bricklink Designer Program page.
The system glitched and more than 5,000 Castle in the Forests were sold. These were legitimate orders, and there was no way to filter out orders that came after the limit had been reached.
Some other interesting insights about purchases of the Castle in the Forest – the exact breakdown of the orders provided by Bricklink were:
| Customers who bought 1 | 75% |
| Customers who bought 2 | 15% |
| Customers who bought 3 or 4 | 5% |
| Customers who bought 5 | 5% |
So it seems like MOST people did the right thing, and the threat of scalpers isn’t quite as pronounced.
So good news if you missed out on the above sets, as you’ll get a second chance at securing the Kakapo, Great Fishing Boat, Sheriff’s Safe or Pursuit of Flight.
Bad luck if you missed out on the Castle, and I suspect that it will inflate the prices further on the secondary market.
Overall, I have to commend LEGO and Bricklink for reacting and responding very swiftly, and welcome the additional 5,000 sets being made of the 4 projects. While it may not please everyone, and I am quite upset that there won’t be a second chance for fans who wanted Castle in the Forest, it feels like they made the best out of a bad decision.
For large corporations like LEGO, these quick pivots and changes are really hard to manoeuvre, through multiple stakeholders and approval processes – and it does seem like in this case, as it concerns production lines and supply chain that LEGO did try and move heaven and earth to get this compromise through.
Personally, I think it would have been fairer if LEGO/Bricklink had cancelled the 5,000 Castle in the Forest orders that somehow glitched through to make it more equitable… and LEGO were quite tight-lipped on exactly how it happened.
To read the Q&A and conversation about the first round, check out this Group Q&A from Recognised LEGO Fan Media (RLFM) Days 2021.
Let me know in the comments what you think of LEGO/Bricklink’s decision and whether this is a good enough resolution?
See below for the press release/statement by Bricklink:
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 3rd 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 3rd
, 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
I really badly want that Kakapo (given I’m a Kiwi ) and I’d love the fishing boat as well but even with an extra 5000 sets I’m guessing the chance of me getting them is still nigh on impossible.
Why can’t Lego do one per customer to stop the profit merchants snapping them all up? It just disgusts me, they are allowing greedy people to wreck it for us real AFOLs who just want one.
And if they’re proving that popular why can’t they just make a proper release of them so anyone that wants them can get them.
More and more TLG are pissing me off – so many rubbish “theme” sets these days and when we finally get some beautifully designed sets I actually *want* we can’t get hold of them…. it makes me fume!
Go back and read the post, because you obviously stopped after the first bullet point.
Kakapo’s bar chart still holding at roughly 4980/5000, since the South Korea region doesn’t seem very interested filling their allocation of that set. Which means come part 2 of round 1, some regions will slowly sell out again while others leave their allocations untouched.
LEGO has been experimenting this year on some of their retail sets where they start the quantity limit low, then the limit is increased if stock remains after initial demand has died down. For example, The Friends Apartments debuted with a quantity limit of 1, increased to 2 after the first day, then eventually raised to 3.
Maybe BrickLink could do the same for this program? Start with a order cap of 1, then increase it after a week if there is still capacity left during the pre-order period. Although I’m not sure if the regional caps might make this problematic.
What site would I go to buy any of the sets on August 3rd?
BrickLink.com or Lego.com?
Thanks!
I love Legos. I am 47 years old and this is the one thing that makes me very happy. I just can not afford very many in a year. I seen that castle one and liked it a lot. I would love to get messages or whatever it is called now, from whoever that has these Legos that I have never seen. Once I know how much they are I will be able to figure out if I could get me one. Please.
I don’t believe the break down for the castle since they already met 10,000. If the breakdown is to be true then 5% bought 100 or more. Prices of sets before hand would have been nice.
So it looks like it was mainly Bricklink/Lego associates who bought those Castle in the Forest sets (or at least all those miraculously multiplicated sets) and now, knowing how the prices peaked, they have no interest at all in letting others buy them. It also explains 5 per person limit. Think about it! You work for Lego/Bricklink. You know about the crowdfunding. You know how the demand is underestimated (especially in case of the Castle in the forest which was the project very hyped on Lego Ideas). You even organise a system glitch that allows all your associates buy as many sets as they want, regardless of the limit (limits are only for outsiders as it seems).
And I want to remind You all, that 5% of people who bought 5 doesn’t mean that they only bought 5% of 5000 sets which is 250. No! It means that 5% of all customers bought 5 sets each. So with use of some more or less complicated math it seems, that 2500 people bought 2500 sets, 500 people bought 1000 sets, 166 people bought 666 and finally 166 people bought 833 sets. So nearly 1700 sets out of 5000 could be bought by other people if there was 1 per person limit was. And 1700 sets is a lot! it’s one third of 5000 (double the numbers if you belive the fairytale about a glitch that let to the situation in which miraculously additional 5000 sets was sold – though they will be produced, without a doubt, becuase now they know, they’re sitting on a goldmine).
Just on the Castle, it does seem to be a very popular set. Begs the question as to why it wasn’t selected in the Ideas program. I can only assume that it was because the 3-in-1 Castle set was in the works and/or we are getting a Castle set for the 90th anniversary set next year. One can only hope…
This castle in the forest looks awesome and fun. Sadly there will always be assholes that ruin it for everyone that loves Legos. I hope anyone that scalps these sets doesn’t sell them and when they actually sell them they sell them at a giant discount.
I seriously don’t understand why Lego goes for this artificial scarcity routine. Yeah I know it underpins a lot of hobbies and interests, but it really doesn’t enhance the brand for me when they release desirable sets and make them deliberately hard to get, thus encouraging a lucrative flippers market.
Don’t get me started on the Lego House exclusives …
Wow… they’ve got first-hand, raw, direct data. People clearly want the Castle set, probably more than the 10k orders received.
They’ve obviously booked more production time for all the sets. Now they have a chance to gauge the actual demand for the Castle set and …. they’re not going to do it!?
Looking at the numbers given it seems that although 75% of *customers* bought just one the scalpers got 20-30% of the *sets*. For details please see this calculation sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bAWYZi9n53yxVjuY6b52Pg8AbQ6HeHw9W4TL0wD3S08
“Regional caps will remain in place” is super bas for AUZ and kakapo.
Buying more than one set doesn’t make you a scalper. Neither does buying only one set make you a consumer.
But your sheet is correct, in that 50% of the allocation went to the 25% of customers who ordered more than one of a set.
Total pile of poo from Lego. “Diluting the exclusivity” is exactly what the should do to avoid being a toxic, fomo abusing company like games workshop for example. This further highlights how broken Lego Ideas is in general at the moment.
Good to see Lego doing the right thing. Shame about people wanting the castle but I think it’s fair given the customers who got through have ordered in good faith.
Should not sell out as quickly the second time around, future sales limit of 1 will make it easier with the next round having 10k.
Why don’t they just release these as normal sets? There’s obviously demand for them.
For the same reasons they weren’t selected to become normal sets during the Ideas selection phase. And no, they can’t just slap a set number on them and release them in stores as-is.
Disappointed that the castle set won’t be offered a second chance. I will give the other four a pass but look forward to round 2 and 3 with a hope of a better chance to secure some sets. Time difference will still be a pain for Aussies. Sigh.
As “Regional caps will remain in place” I really don’t understand why the round doesn’t start for example at 8PM *local* time but at the exact same time around the world.
Can’t agree more on this, mate.
I think it’s the best of a bad situation. I’ll be trying to get the fishing boat when preorders open up again. Disappointing about the Castle set but understandable why they are honouring the extra orders and not resetting it, it’s not the fault of those who ordered. I’m a bit surprised by the ordering numbers but good to see people for the most part are doing the right thing. I wonder if they will restrict those who have ordered in the first round from doing so again when the additional 5000 go up.
I think it’s funny people keep using the words “did the right thing” if they only ordered 1. Was there somewhere that said “you can only order 1 set”? No. The limit was 5, and if someone ordered more than 1, that does not mean they did the wrong thing. They played within the parameters that were in place. Lego placed those parameters and now have chosen to change those rules, but that doesn’t mean anyone did something wrong by ordering more than 1.
Freeed, it has been legal to have slaves but it has been considered “the wrong thing”. Morale is different the parameters currently available. I see nothing funny in this.
Oh so you’re the guy whose job is to tell us how many sets we’re allowed to order. Maybe you could also tell us how many cars we’re allowed to park in our driveway, how many children we’re allowed to raise, how many arts we’re allowed to hang on our wall.
The program was designed with a particular quantity limit in mind. If that limit was wrong, it’s not the fault of customers who stayed within the limit.
People, chill out.
It’s just a set of Lego.
With that said, on my humble opinion, limiting the allowable buying quantity to 1 is the right thing to do.
I am surprised that they had set it to 5!
Even at the Lego website, some of their famous sets, you are only allowed to get 2 at the most.
It’s about thinking of the others and not just yourself.
It’s a very low limited quantity that’s sold, so letting more folks getting the sets (instead of a few folks buying bulks of them) is absolutely the right move.
Thanks for the update. Pretty gutted to hear about the glitch on Castle in the Forest as I was hoping for another chance, but I understand. I will just have to admire people’s pictures! (as you’re right, watch them increase in price even further now)
Great news that overall most people were genuine fans getting the sets but I think enabling 1 per purchase is definitely the right thing to do going forward. No other sets in Round 1 interest me however it’s good to know that it seems like sets might be a bit more obtainable for this Aussie going forward – I’d like to try for the Western movie set I think.