LEGO has been offering two different ways to purchase LEGO pieces at their online shop. Pick-A-Brick is like the online version of the PAB Wall at LEGO stores, with basic and useful pieces. And Bricks & Pieces is for purchasing parts from recently released LEGO sets, as well as for requesting missing/broken parts via customer service. The differences and overlaps created some confusion, so LEGO is now merging the two programs. Details below.
Background
Our current Pick-A-Brick and Bricks & Pieces setup mean 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 & 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 fulfillment 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 & 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 bestsellers 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 be some elements that will be at a slightly higher price and others at a lower price.
In the past, different colors of the same design often had different prices. Now the prices will be more consistent, with some exceptions. Certain colors (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 & 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 & 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 fulfillment 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 & 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 in early February. This will be followed by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US in late February. We’ll then look to roll out 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.
What do you think? Have you been using Pick-A-Brick and/or Bricks & Pieces? How do you like the idea of merging them together? Do you have any thoughts, questions, or concerns? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below!
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Hmm, I’ve bought on Bricks and Pieces a couple of times the last few years to get certain new pieces, although the shipping times require some patience. I guess I’m cautiously optimistic…
I’m slightly curious on the Build-A-Mini drive, as well…
This sounds positive. It will be interesting to see how the prices compare to Bricklink sellers. I don’t use the current Bricks and Pieces much now. Maybe this will change that, or maybe it won’t. Wait and see I guess.
Bricklink prices are based almost solely on supply and demand, whereas TLG is able to largely control the supply, but has to keep in mind the production costs.
Thus, basic parts that have been in production for a long time are often cheaper on Bricklink, whereas newer and printed parts are often cheaper on Bricks And Pieces…