Starting a Bricklink store is a significant undertaking so it’s important to take a step back and think about what you’ll need to get started. What equipment will you need? How much capital will you need to get started? What physical space do you have available? And much much more.
In this article, we’re going to cover all these topics and more, but first:
Why do you want to start selling on Bricklink?
To Help Fund Your Hobby
This is probably the most popular reason for starting a Bricklink store. You love Lego and there are so many cool Lego sets you want to collect, but they are expensive, and there’s no way you can keep up with the constant release schedule that Lego is putting out. Setting up a Bricklink store may eventually bring in some additional income to spend on more Lego.
Sounds good right? Just keep in mind that you will need capital to get started which may mean you need to sacrifice adding more Lego to your collection for a while, and at least some of the money that comes in will likely need re-investing into the store to keep it from stagnating.
Start a Business
Maybe you’ve always dreamed of starting your own business, no matter how small, and what’s better than to have a business doing what you love. I can see how this might be an exciting project. Setting up the store, researching the best sets to buy, developing your processes and setting up your new work environment can be fun.
Just be careful that once you’re all set up your interest doesn’t wane. Orders may be slow to start with and it may be some time before you start to see some return on your investment. So be realistic about your goals and expectations.
Investment Opportunity
Perhaps you have a surplus of cash you’re looking to invest and given the poor interest rates, you feel you may get a better return on your money buying Lego sets for resale in the future when the sets have retired, and have hopefully increased in value.
Keep in mind that you’ll likely need to hold on to these Lego sets for some years for them to retire and increase in value.
If you want to invest a significant sum you’re going to need somewhere to store all these sealed sets and keep them in tip-top condition so be sure you have accounted for this. Many investors have started storing in a spare bedroom and fairly quickly needed the services of a self-storage container. Storage can be a costly expense if you don’t have enough space at home you can utilise.
Don’t expect all sets to return a profit. Even if you can obtain them at a 50% discount or more, this is no guarantee of a good return in the future. Resale will depend on the desirability of the set and some themes will sell much better than others.
Research will be key if you want to go this route.
Spares For Your Own MOC’s
It may seem like a great idea to have an inventory of Lego that you can pilfer at any given time for your own builds, but creating a Bricklink store for this purpose alone doesn’t have a lot of merit.
You will need to invest pretty heavily into your Bricklink store’s stock and infrastructure and the likelihood that you’ll have in stock exactly the parts you need for your build are unlikely.
Far better to simply obtain the parts you need as and when the need arises from other Bricklink sellers. It’s not unusual to receive an order from a Bricklink seller within 24-48 hours, which should be soon enough for even the most impatient of builders.
Sounds Fun
It could be that setting up a Bricklink store is just a natural extension of the Lego hobby and sounds like it might be fun. Perhaps you want to run one with the rest of the family and teach the kids the fundamentals of running a business.
If this is you and your expectation is purely to have fun then why not give it a go. As long as you’re realistic about what you want to achieve you are unlikely to be disappointed.
Do beware that it can become addictive and end up becoming the primary aspect of your Lego hobby, rather than building and collecting.
One of the biggest mistakes new sellers make is to underestimate the amount of space and storage they need.
What type of store do you want to run?
Most Bricklink stores follow one (or more) of the models we’ve listed below. It is important to give each of these some thought and to weigh up the pros and cons of each approach before starting.
New Parts
New parts are the easiest way to start your store. You would want to acquire sets at a discount, typically from supermarkets, Amazon or other online retailers. The higher the discount you can obtain them for will mean higher profits or an ability to reduce rates in order to attract more customers. But keep in mind that a healthy discount alone is not a guarantee of it being profitable. You will also need to check the sets part out value.
New parts are easy to manage because Bricklink knows exactly what parts are contained in any given Lego set and in what quantity. All you need to do is separate each part by type and add them to your Bricklink Inventory.
When buying new sets you want to aim for buying each set in multiples, say 10 of each. This will give you a reasonable quantity of each of the parts from the set. Whereas buying only one set will leave you with lots of single or low quantity parts that would likely be unattractive to buyers.
Used Parts
Many Bricklink stores specialise only in used Lego parts and minfigures. This model requires the lowest amount of capital to get started. However, the time needed for cleaning, sorting and quality checking them is significant.
You never know what you’ll find in a bulk lot of Lego. You may find some hidden treasures but you will also more than likely find lots of off-brand Lego such as Megablocks that will be of little use to you as they can’t be sold on Bricklink.
Minifigures
Some sellers like to specialise in minifigures or minifigure related spares. It is difficult to run a Bricklink store that is made up of purely minifigures, as you’ll either need to acquire them as part of a new set, obtain them via bulk lots or via direct purchase from other Bricklink or eBay sellers.
If your buying new sets or bulk lots and have no desire to add these parts to your inventory you will want to sell the parts in bulk to other sellers. If taking this approach keep in mind that other sellers will expect the parts at reduced prices knowing that there are no mini figures included.
Sealed Sets
This approach is more in line with the investment business model. Though I suspect that most investment sellers would get a better return via eBay rather than listing them on Bricklink itself.
Sealed sets are incredibly easy to add to your inventory and manage. Keep in mind that storage requirements will be significantly higher for sealed over storing parts and that mailing larger parcels can be more of a challenge than parts or minifigure-based orders.
Used Sets
It could be that you enjoy completing used sets and selling them. This will likely appeal to those who enjoy the building experience more than the selling.
This is probably even more time-consuming than simply selling the used parts and often you will find that the value of the set is higher as separate parts than it is as the actual set. Therefore, this model should be chosen mostly based on the enjoyment you will get from rebuilding the sets.
Specialised Stores
It’s also worth mentioning that you may want to consider specialising in parts that would appeal to a particular niche of the Lego hobby. Lego Technic is probably the best example here, but you could possibly also specialise in parts suitable for mosaics, Lego Friends etc.
Whatever store type you choose you will benefit from having as extensive a selection as possible ( a high lot count in Bricklink language) as well as having these lots in bulk.
What Capital Do You Have To Get Started?
None
If you have no capital to start your journey into running a Bricklink store the only likely option would be to sell some of your own collection or bulk lego that you may have accumulated over the years.
Even in this situation, you will still need somewhere to store the parts which you will need to obtain if you don’t already have something.
Limited funds
If funds are limited you’ll need to be realistic about how quickly you’re going to get your store off the ground and how successful it is likely to be. If you do manage to get started you’ll want to reinvest all your profits into increasing your inventory and store infrastructure so it may be some time before you can expect some of the profits to be syphoned off for other purposes.
Significant Disposable Income
It may be that you have lots of disposable income to invest in the store and can easily write this investment off with no expectation of any short-term return.
This is the ideal situation as its takes away the pressure to get the return on investment quickly and also means that any profits can be reinvested in the store to aid its growth. The more stock you have the more customers you will attract and the more income you will have as a result of this.
Loan
If you need to consider taking a loan to get your store started I would recommend holding off until you can save some of your own money. Taking out a loan would be very risky at best and could leave you in debt.
Also, keep in mind that the loan will need to be repaid which will impact your profit margin.
Partner
One other possible route is to go into some form of partnership. Perhaps a friend or family member would be interested in investing in the business for a return on their investment without having to put all the hard work in of parting out, managing inventory and mailing out orders.
If you go this route be sure to have a written agreement in place from the start so that each of you is clear on the rules of engagement with each other.
What equipment will you need?
One of the biggest mistakes new sellers make is to underestimate the amount of space and storage they need. If a Lego set has 100 different types of part in it, you will need 100 different compartments just to store that one set.
As you add the parts from other sets to the store there will be some common parts that can share the compartment but the number of drawers or compartments needed will grow very quickly once you start adding stock.
Some people begin with the plastic bag method, whereby each part is stored in a separate plastic bag within a drawer. I highly recommend you DO NOT use this method. It is extremely time intensive when picking the parts to fulfil orders and quickly becomes unwieldy.
My advice would be not to skimp on parts organisation. How you start will likely impact the way you run your store forever. I know it’s easy to think you can start with cheap storage and upgrade it later but that’s a huge task once you have thousands of parts in your inventory. Buy the best organizers you can justify.
Other equipment you will need are:
- Sorting Trays – I personally like the STÖDJA from Ikea which are low cost options.
- Containers – For use when parting out Lego sets – Plastic cups are great for putting each part type into as you part-out sets.
- Weighing Scales – For weighing your parcels so you can apply the correct postage weight.
- Printer & Paper – For printing picking lists, shipping labels etc
- Bubble mailers or postage boxes
- Boxes – These are for mailing out larger orders or sealed sets
- Tape dispenser
- Packing materials
The more experienced seller will also want:
- Label Printer – For printing 6 x 4 mailing labels. Buying one of these was one of my best investments for the store to date.
- Counting Scales – For counting out parts in bulk e.g. over 100
How and Where Will You Buy Stock?
The type of stock you will require will depend on the type of Bricklink store you have decided to run. If you have decided to focus on new parts you will want to watch for discounts on new Lego sets. The prime locations to find these are going to be local retail stores and online outlets such as:
- Supermarkets
- Amazon
- Lego Store
- Online Stores
Be sure to use a cash back service such as Quidco when buying online. Using this or similar services will give you a further discount which will be paid at a later date after any returns periods etc.
If you have decided you want to focus on used Lego you will want to check online auction sites, local online marketplaces etc. Such as:
- eBay / Shpoch
- Gumtree / Craig’s List / Facebook Marketplace
- Facebook Groups
- Newspaper Adds
- Car Boot Sales / Yardsales
Taxation and Accounting
Running a Bricklink store will bring you additional income and it would be nice to think you can just put this in the bank and forget about it. But you will need to declare this additional income to the tax authorities in your country.
Check your local tax authority on how to submit details of this extra income. You will also need to register your business either as a sole trader or a limited company in the UK, or alternatively, a sole proprietorship or LLC in the US.
You will need to ensure you keep good records of your income and expenditure so that you report on your profits as you will only be taxed on the profits and not your sales income. Records can be simply kept on a spreadsheet or you can use accounting solutions such as QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, FreshBooks etc. Here at Brick Arena we started with a spreadsheet in the first year of trading but have been happy QuickBooks Online users since.
Depending how complex your tax affairs are you may want to consider the services of an accountant. They can offer good advice on how to setup your business to best meet your situation and take all the stress out of submitting your records each year. While this might sound alike a big step, you can enlist an accountants services for as little as couple of hundred pounds a year in the UK and we have found that they have saved us much more than this.
Other Things to Consider
Phew! We’ve covered a lot but hang on in there, there are a few more things to consider.
There are other more general things to consider in terms of how they will impact your Lego hobby or lifestyle.
Research time
If you’re going to focus on new parts and minifigures you’ll need lots of time for research. You’ll want to keep up with all the latest Lego sets, check sets for the highest part out values (highest profitability in simple terms) and you’ll need to constantly be on the lookout for deals.
Therefore you can expect to spend a lot of time online and possibly sacrifice more of that hobby time.
Time Intensive
Aside from the research you will need to be parting out sets, uploading them to your Bricklink inventory, administering your business (recoding income and expenditure and keeping other records.
Cashflow
Not having enough available cash can cripple your ability to invest in new stock when it’s available at good prices. This is usually less of a problem when you’re running the store as a hobby as you’ll likely have another income to cover your household bills etc. But, if you end up turning this into a full-time business (I know that may seem some way off now, but you never know) your income from the store will need to cover all your household bills and leave something left for investment in new stock.
Where & How will you Mail Out Orders
Hopefully, when you get your Bricklink store off the ground you’ll start getting orders in quickly. And of course, these will need to be mailed out to customers.
It’s worth thinking about how you’ll do this. Do you have a Post Office nearby? How often can you reasonably get orders picked and mailed out? Every day, two to three times per week, weekly etc.
Running a Store will reduce your time for building Lego
By now I’m sure you’ve gotten the point. Running a Bricklink store is a time-intensive endeavour which will take away from your building time. Be sure you are prepared to give this time up or you’ll end up resenting the time spent running the store.
Conclusion
So, The Big Question is… Is it worth starting a Bricklink Store?
There is no doubt about it, it can be enjoyable, it can be frustrating, it can be intense, but ultimately it can also be satisfying and rewarding monetarily. Whether it’s for you or not, only you can decide. Just consider all the points above before you jump in.
6 Comments
Christophe
Hello thank you for your site I understand better now why I missed my entry into the world of selling bricks. at first I based myself only on the sale of new sets (very heavy in stock and can be profitable)
then I went to the sale of new parts and again for a second I was sorting the parts by Bricklink category (yet another error) so I went to the sorting of a drawer bin for only 1 type of parts and 1 only color so with 5000 batches and 200,000 that’s storage. for now i think this is the best way to store
thank you all for all the information
Keith Bage
Hi Christophe, Organising your inventory well is critical to the successful running of a store. As orders come in you need to be able to pick parts in the most efficient manner possible. Having parts in unique locations by item type and colour is so important. Those short of space may go for a solution which involved bagging items in drawers. This can be OK if limited but is not a way to run an entire store.
Good luck with your Lego selling journey.
Christophe
the first problem is also the storage places (room in the house, garage, basement, cabin at the bottom of the garden, entrepros)
it can be a limit to the quantity on sale
Keith Bage
Yes, you certainly need a lot of room and storage units to run a Bricklink store. A garage or basement is ideal if you have one.
Renat
Hello Keith,
Thank you for doing the work to publish this article, I’ve found it very helpful.
I’m just starting my journey on BL with used lego bought in bulk.
For now I am using bag’s to store my part’s just because it’s the cheapest option and I plan on doing a minimum 50 euro order’s, so I would sacrifice the price, but not have to fill ten’s of order’s a day. Yes I will spend more time opening boxes and then bag’s to look for order’s, but I’m not going to do that less time’s overall.
Considering your knowledge, what kind of space requirement’s would you say are needed for a store with 200k part’s ?
Interested to hear your thought’s, and keep up the good work !
Keith Bage
Sorry for the late reply. I would suggest that you need something along the lines of a spare small bedroom. I have over 700K of parts in my room is possible the size of two ‘box rooms’. Hope that helps.