This morning, the LEGO® Group announced sweeping changes in the way fans buy individual bricks. Until now, the LEGO® website offered two different ways to order individual elements, Pick A Brick and Bricks and Pieces. In February, all of that changes. To make a long story short, the two services will merge. I summarized the main points of this Pick A Brick update below. The full press release from the LEGO® Group follows for all the finer details and explanations.
Pick A Brick Update Summary
- Bricks and Pieces is merging into Pick A Brick.
- Elements previously offered through two services will now be viewable in one location.
- A new warehouse space will open in North America to decrease order delivery times to Canada and the US.
- 1600 best-seller elements will ship directly from the new warehouse in North America.
- Orders from the North American warehouse will be trackable.
- Standard elements (not among the 1600 most popular) will still ship from Denmark.
- Orders from Denmark will not be trackable.
- Best-sellers will be easily identifiable with a yellow tag when ordering.
- There will be a split basket during shopping, one for best-sellers and one for standard elements.
- Shipping time from the North American warehouse will be around 5 working days.
- Shipping time from Denmark will remain 13-18 working days.
- Element prices from Pick A Brick and Bricks and Pieces will be aligned in the new system.
- Different colors of the same design will now have the same price (except for gold, silver, glow in the dark, and decorated elements).
- If each of your baskets reach a minimum threshold, you will not pay handling fees.
- All parts orders will now be eligible towards gift-with-purchase thresholds.
- Larger orders will be possible on one platform instead spreading orders out over two platforms.
- To facilitate the transition, Pick A Brick will be offline for about 48 hours from Jan. 23 to 25, 2022.
- Bricks and Pieces will remain online during that outage.
- The merged experience will begin in late February for Canadians.
- A Pick and Build Hub will eventually come online and may include Build A Mini.
Official Press Release from the LEGO® Group
Background
Our current Pick a Brick and Bricks & Pieces setup means that consumers aren’t aware of the two different experiences. During 2021 we’ve been running tests and meeting with different consumer groups to better understand the current consumer experience.
Based on these learnings our next step will be to create a new merged experience on LEGO.com. We’ll merge Bricks and Pieces and Pick a Brick into one front-end experience where consumers can browse our portfolio of elements in one place more easily.
Additionally, we’ll improve the shipping time in the US and Canada by implementing a new fulfilment area in our US warehouse. This will reduce shipping time for our top 1,600 elements from 13-18 working days to up to 5 working days. There will likely be some shipping delays for a short time after we launch this experience.
What’s happening
We’re merging Bricks and Pieces into Pick a Brick. With the new Pick a Brick setup, you’ll be able to shop across one merged portfolio, with clear visibility between Standard and Bestseller elements. You’ll also have the option to choose what elements you want from which warehouse. Items that are listed as Bestseller are our most popular elements and will ship from Poland or the US, and your order will be trackable. Standard elements will ship from our Billund warehouse and will not be trackable. It’ll be easy to tell which items are Bestsellers by the yellow tag.
We’ve worked hard to align prices between the two different experiences and keep the prices as low as we can while reflecting changes to market conditions. There will some elements that will be at a slightly higher price and others at a lower price.
In the past, different colours of the same design often had different prices. Now the prices will be more consistent, with some exceptions. Certain colours (like gold and silver), pieces that glow in the dark, and decorated elements will still be priced differently across the same design.
With this new experience we’ll be introducing a split basket with a threshold for each basket. The split basket view will give you visibility between Bestseller and Standard elements and where your chosen elements are coming from (either Billund, Poland or the US). If your basket meets the minimum threshold amount, then you won’t have to pay any handling fees. We’ll continuously improve our supply chain processes to reduce and simplify these handling fees in the future.
This new experience means all parts orders, including those previously made in Bricks and Pieces can be applied to promotions (such as gifts with purchase) on LEGO.com.
Why we’re making this change
Analysis has indicated that our current setup isn’t always the best experience. Differentiation between our Pick a Brick and Bricks and Pieces experiences isn’t always clear. This new merged experience will bring our portfolio into one place, with clear visibility on Standard versus Bestseller elements.
Customers who place larger orders currently need to split their order between Pick a Brick and Bricks and Pieces. The new merged experience will mean larger orders can be placed in one spot, with greater visibility on delivery times.
When is it happening and in which markets?
The first change happens for the US and Canada when we implement a new fulfilment area in our US-based warehouse in January and start fulfilling Pick a Brick orders there. In order for this change to occur, Pick a Brick will be unavailable for approximately 48 hours, starting late evening January 23rd to January 25th when Pick a Brick comes back online. This outage is planned and is necessary. During this downtime, individual elements will still be available for purchase through Bricks and Pieces.
After that we’ll roll out the new merged experience as a soft launch. This will allow us to understand what’s working and identify improvement opportunities early.
We’re planning to roll out the new merged experience to the Netherlands, France, Germany and the UK early February. This will be followed by Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US in late February. We’ll then look to rollout to all other countries globally.
During the soft launch, we’ll use several metrics and insights available to us to understand if the new experience is working as it should. We’ll take any learnings from this soft launch and use them to help us deliver the best experience possible for our customers.
New features and functionalities
We’re also creating a new location called the ‘Pick and Build hub’ for Pick a Brick and similar future experiences. With the new ‘Pick and Build hub’, we’ll test and launch new experiences that enable creativity and fun.
As a first trial we’ll introduce Build a Mini to our shoppers in Europe and Asia. With this tool you can combine different minifigure parts and create your own minifigure. The Build a Mini selection of bricks will only be available for this experience. They won’t be available as part of the Pick a Brick assortment.
I have to say that I am happy the LEGO® Group is consolidating the two services. However, it remains to be seen how well the new service will launch and how prices will compare, among other things. How do you feel about the upcoming Pick A Brick update? Be sure to share your thoughts and concerns below or reach out on social media. For more LEGO® news, click here.
Until next time,
-Tom
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