legotownlinz

If the rumors are true that 10277 is a Crocodile engine, then Lego has just stopped me from buying a train from the competition. I prefer Lego products because the quality is superior and I'm sure many people feel the same. The products must just be there, then they will be bought instead of the clone stuff.

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.

When I came out of my dark ages a few years ago, life was simple: There was Lego (offering a few AFOL-targeted sets that brough me back to the Lego hobby) but nothing else. Admittedly, there were already some Chinese competitors, but they had no impact on the market and I didn’t care for them either. In the last few years, the situation has changed: Not only did the number of competitors increase, but also the availability of the sets in Europe has improved as well as the quality (which is imho still not good enough, but obviously good enough for many other customers). Despite the shift of the market, one company stubbornly sticks to their old strategy: Lego. There are no signs that they respond to the better cost/performance ratio nor can I see other measures to face the competition. I don’t think that lowering prices is the right answer to competition, instead, the part count should be increased at the same price. More and more often I notice that a Lego set looks miserable compared to other offers. The competition just throws in more parts. This is true for both play sets and AFOL sets. Lego’s AFOL offerings, Ideas and Creator Expert saw an increase in the number of sets during the last few years, but it was too small to counter the exploding number of competitors’ sets. The variety of sets on the market has changed and will further change the buying behavior: It is no longer reasonable to collect all AFOL sets, but it is necessary to limit to one’s favorite themes and Lego offers only a faction of the sets available for a certain theme. If Lego does not adjust its strategy, they’ll continue to loose market share. One pirate, castle, train, space, … you name it … set every few years is not enough if there are docens of alternatives out there. I refused to buy Chinese stuff so far, but it gets harder every day to ignore it. My main interest is trains, where Bluebrixx is aggressively entering the market. I wish I could spend my money on Lego trains, but the products are simply not there. Obviously, Lego can’t make sets for every special interest market. They would end up with 100s or 1000s of sets. But Lego is big enough and has enough money to come up with the following business model that would kill all reasons to buy competitors’ stuff: Allow customers to order their custom sets! I’m aware that the Lego Digital Designer once allowed that and that you can still order bricks on Lego’s website and Bricklink. But it’s neither convenient nor reasonably priced nor are all important parts in all important colors available at any time nor is there any reliable source of proven designs. Fan designers should be able to rely on a fixed set of parts they can use. They upload their creations to Ideas, Rebrickable or a to-be-created platform where customers can buy them, not only the instruction but also the bricks. Designers get a payment for each order. There should be some kind of rating system or categories, e.g. “designed by Lego” or “reviewed and approved by Lego” that only contain designs that meet certain quality goals. Lego Ideas in its current form would not be necessary anymore, instead all designs would be available all the time and produced on demand. All the talented designers would be part of an ecosystem that is controlled by Lego and would not have to work for or sell their designs to competitors (that are often stealing the designs anyway). Key for the success of the proposed system is the technical infrastructure to handle the orders without manual work, otherwise custom sets would be too expensive (like pick-a-brick is now). Lego is the only market participant that could currently afford such large fully automated warehouses. Of course, the current Lego product portfolio for children should continue to exist (with a more competitive price/performance ratio), also some of the best AFOL sets should be sold in Lego stores to attract new customers. But the bulk of the AFOL market should be moved to the proposed model where customers choose from a large catalogue of design that are made on demand. I strongly believe this is the future to better respond to customer needs. Lego is in the best position to realize it, but if they don’t someone else will do it and then dominate the market. What are your opinions? Are changes in Lego’s business model necessary?

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.