legotownlinz

Wow I'm so excited

Not sure what models you mean, but in general Bluebrixx does not care about IP. They sell a knockoff of the Lego Ideas piano and several modular buildings without paying the designers. Bluebrixx is a dislikable company and one of the reasons I wish there are better alternatives, preferably one with Lego bricks.

As you said, Pick-a-Brick is not cheap, so it wouldn't hurt other sellers too much. Of course Pick-a-Brick must be treated like any other seller and not be privileged in any way.

Bricklink's AFOL program was a good start. It could be a good alternative to custom orders when done regularly and with less limitations. Another improvement that would be rather easy to do is integrating Pick-a-Brick into Bricklink.

Do you understand the meaning of the word 'average' in 'Average price of 10 cent per part'? I have no clue how you came to your conclusions unless you overlooked 'average'. Interesting. Not for me. Not every new part must be added to the stable set of parts. Of course the stable set is always a subset of the parts available at a given time. If a part of the stable set is retired, it should be announced early enough to give designers a chance to modify their designs. It is not necessary that each design is available on the platform forever, if part availability is guaranteed for two years it is certainly enough.

I've explained it before: All these options are complicated, expensive or both. You can't upload part lists to Pick-a-Brick. Part availability directly from Lego is limited. Bricklink splits your part list into many orders with a shipping fee for each. I have first hand experience with all of these I can can tell you it is a mess and expensive. These offers are for die-hard AFOLs, but unusable for the average customer who saw a nice design and just wants to order it. I'd see the following criteria for custom orders to be widely accepted: Average price of 10 cent per part Direct order from a web platform without dealing with part lists Easy to understand rating system so that customers understand how extensive the design has been tested Stable set of available parts designers can rely on Availability of all important parts

This is certainly true, but Lego's problems are mainly in the AFOL market. The kids market is still fine, there no clone brands in most of the stores except base plates and a few brick boxes. Thus I suggested to improve ordering bricks and not creating sets for niche markets. Let the AFOLs create and share their own sets!

Cobi is very successful with ship models, e.g. the Titanic, another niche market ignored by Lego.

I don't want this discussion to focus too much on trains, train are just an example for the problems Lego is facing. Nevertheless I explain it again, I underestimated that it is hard to understand what train fans want without being a train fan: We neither want a decorated Christmas train nor an out-of-scale, overpriced Disney train nor a haunted train nor trains designed for children aged six. We just want detailed, ordinary trains and train-related buildings. The last excellent set was the Horizon Express in 2013. The competition offers many train-related sets for AFOLs. Trains are a niche market, but this is true for castle, pirates, space, ... and many other themes and for each of these themes there are alternatives. If it's just trains, it wouldn't be an issue for Lego, but dozens of nice markets are relevant. If you believe Lego is performing well: Fine. You can continue to collect Lego sets just because they are Lego sets. I don't. And I guess many other people are more focused, too. I would like to know your opinion how Lego can improve, that's why I started this thread. If you want to prove me that I'm an idiot who doesn't value Lego's products, please leave the discussion, it will lead us nowhere.

Isn't it obvious, do I really have to explain it (again)? This topic is about Lego and its competitors in the market for Lego-compatible products. Trains are just an example, it's the same for other themes too.

I'm interested in the theme, not a particular set. If Lego offers something train-related, I would buy it instead of a BlueBrixx set.

I didn't say Lego should stop making their own sets, of course they still need sets for the toy market and the Lego stores. Your assumption that customers buy Lego sets when they can't buy custom sets might be wrong if there are better alternatives. I started this topic because I'm considering to collect clone brand sets that I can better use for my city/train layout. Just take a look at these sets and compare them to Lego's train offerings. Do you really think that Lego will not loose market share if they don't improve? I wish I could build the Bluebrixx train sets with Lego bricks. The instructions can be downloaded but it requires dozens Bricklink orders and costs a fortune. I guess it's more likely that 99% of the customers buy from Bluebrixx and not from Bricklink or Pick-a-Brick. I'd like to avoid clone brands, but I don't know how to do it. Buying Lego sets only gets less and less reasonable. Am I really the only one who is unhappy with the current situation?

I've made two orders to circumvent the limit.

None of these services ever targeted the mass market and none of them had the technical infrastructure to handle custom orders efficiently. When done right, it could work. The high upfront investment is a risk, obviously.

With an easy to use platform and payments for the designers, I foresee a significant percentage of all the MOCs to be uploaded to such a platform. Even the Ideas submissions would be sufficient to have enough content. I thought of a rating or category system. Of course Lego should check part lists and instructions at least for popular sets, but there should be no hurdle to submit a set. And it should be possible to upload and order your own part lists. If it would be simple, everybody could do it. Lego has more resources than others, thus is in the best position to make it work. If they succeed, it would set them apart from the competition. The testing has do be done for every new mold, but not for every set.

From the customers perspective competition is a good thing, obviously. Let's not call it a strategy against the competition, but a strategy to raise or at least keep the market share. No matter how you name it, change is necessary if Lego wants to remain the leading manufacturer. As I explained in the opening posting, having the best products is not sufficient is the customers want more specialized products. It's like having the best TV channel - nevertheless customers switch to Netflix and Amazon Prime in droves because they are more flexible. Markets change, including the brick market. I've bought many Lego sets because I liked them and for the building experience. And I always had the goal to somehow integrate them in my city/train layout. But many sets do not integrate well and I'm lacking time to turn them into MOCs. So I ended up with Apocalypseburg, Disney Castle, fairground rides, Hogwarts and so on that are really nice sets, but they are not what I actually need. I need modular buildings and trains, but only get one building per year and no train at all. It would be so cool if you could buy all the parts for a Rebrickable set directly from Lego!

You might be right, but the growing number of brick stores sell all kind of brands, not just Lego. Some don't sell Lego at all. This is a a bad situation for Lego and something they should develop a strategy against. We are at the beginning of a market transformation: Right now, only the specialized brick stores sell clone brands, but its foreseeable that general toy stores will follow.

The inspiration is Ghost - The Haunted House in Legoland Billund.

I wish Assembly Square gets replaced by another 4000+ pieces set in January.

A tamper is also on my todo list for a Lego build. In my job I'm writing the software for the real machines.

It's a fantastic MOC!

Even if I buy a printer one day I would still buy BrickTracks and Trixbrix products. I have absolutely no interest in reinventing the wheel.

I understand both perspectives. For the Lego hobby I'm on the consumer side and for another hobby I'm on the producer side. I made a living from my company for several years, now I run it besides another job. I didn't give up, desprite declining revenues. And it never came to my mind to blame other people for competing with my company, or for buying competitor's products or for mistakes I made.

It's a pity because no competition means higher prices. 4D Brix was a profit-oriented company, not a community service. Same is TrixBrix. Many companies start as a community project, but once they start selling stuff, it must be accepted that there will be competition. Many of these companies are founded by brilliant technicians. They focus entirely on the technical stuff and neglect marketing, distribution, ... BrickTracks is going the same route: Almost perfect products, but reasonably priced shipping/distribution to any other countries than US is not solved.

Same for me, I have several TrixBrix parts like double crossings (R40, R104), three way switches and Y-switches. All of them work well and I wonder how the geometry could be bad if it is a direct result of the Lego system. Of course there's a certain degree of freedom in the details, but I can run the trains over TrixBrix switches as fast as over Lego switches, so there doesn't seem to be any problems and visually they look good to me as well. Regarding innovative parts, I've not seen the 45° curved switch in H0 track systems. But it is a TrixBrix exclusive, thus not copied from 4D Brix. Same applies to the new narrow gauge switches. My conclusion is that TrixBrix's business conduct is correct. Competitive in the sense that they use mistakes by the competition to their advantage, but correct. I see no moral reason not to buy from them. The only reason not to buy are better molded products from the competition. I don't buy anything 3D printed that is available or announced from BrickTracks as molded product.