Bricklink's AFOL Designer Program finalists have been selected and are now available for pre-order. Sets meeting sales goal would be produced and shipped out by May 2019. Being a castle/historical builds fan I was so happy to see a castle set, the Löwenstein Castle, being on the list! The castle looks fantastic to me. The price is a little steep, but as of this writing is already 47% funded, so chance of it becoming a reality is extremely high.

https://www.bricklink.com/v3/crowdproject/view_design.page?id=62780

Here are the rest of the finalists: https://www.bricklink.com/v3/crowdproject/main.page

 

Does anyone have the link to, and/or the name of, the wholesale store?

thanks.

57 minutes ago, $20 on joe vs dan said:

If BL renegs on their promises, the loss of trust will be much worse than the short-term gains....we're talking about a very informed Afol market (not the masses of soccer moms)

Doubt it. Only resellers will get their panties bunched up.

41 minutes ago, Mathew said:

Doubt it. Only resellers will get their panties bunched up.

Let's say you're an AFoL, but missed out on the castle...but being a fan and trusting BL's policies...opted to pay triple for the set on secondary market...I'd be pissed.

Also...pretty much all collectors are resellers...just that some have a longer hold strategy...

Even if that wasn't the case..arguably...resellers provide a very important segment of the LEGO market and pissing them off is also gonna hurt BL tremendously 

I guess this shuts the door on them continuing this program.

21 minutes ago, iahawks550 said:

I guess this shuts the door on them continuing this program.

Why are you saying that?

I have always thought that this entire project was going to be very difficult to handle, but has there been any confirmation of a "never again - we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into" statement?

*hasn't

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15 minutes ago, KShine said:

Why are you saying that?

I have always thought that this entire project was going to be very difficult to handle, but has there been any confirmation of a "never again - we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into" statement?

The thank you note, references “pilot program”, personally I think the project is good, better than LEGO ideas, IMHO

The thank you note, references “pilot program”, personally I think the project is good, better than LEGO ideas, IMHO

Interestingly, I just found out recently that BrickLink has a partnership with CUUSOO. The original lego ideas group.

The designs and integration with Studio 2 are indeed excellent and I also want to see the program continue.

I’ll say again that the crowd sourcing and shipping methodology needs work. They need to go all in and set up and fund a program and deal with shipping packing and basic business logistics ahead of time. LEGO might well be thinking about not going ahead with the deal as it could easily start competing too much with IDEAS and there’s probably at least some fear of overlap from a design that gets approved that could upset sales of one they have in the pipe.


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1 hour ago, donbee said:

Interestingly, I just found out recently that BrickLink has a partnership with CUUSOO. The original lego ideas group.

That is interesting, what I feel is better is the commit to purchase rather than the “like”, although the committing should be more robust 

I don't believe that 2500 sets is competing much with, or taking away from LEGO (and anyway, we must remember that what is actually being sold here is LEGO).

LEGO might well be thinking about not going ahead with the deal as it could easily start competing too much with IDEAS and there’s probably at least some fear of overlap from a design that gets approved that could upset sales of one they have in the pipe.

Don’t forget that LEGO reviewed and approved all these designs in advance (see the behind the scenes videos). They already killed anything too close to Ideas or any other project well before the crowdfunding phase.

  For those still on the fence about one of these...Last day to order from BL

Through June 30 actually. Their website has a funny way of counting days....

Im on the fence about the Fire truck. Already purchased Roadster, science Tower and Hot Shot.

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29 minutes ago, CosmicSpeed said:

Im on the fence about the Fire truck. Already purchased Roadster, science Tower and Hot Shot.

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What blew me away w/ the fire truck is its size.  Huge! Should display rather well. I had a budget so I couldn't get it, but that would have been the next order for me.

If they are going to continue it they should do a better job about picking the sets that make it to the crowd funding stage. Personally I thought a few of those finalist sets were pretty ugly.

They should set up 9 finalists, then allow each registered BL member 1 vote for their favorite. Then only send the top 2-3 vote getting sets to the crowdfunding stage. Then they wouldn't have to worry about selling off excess sets at bulk/wholesale prices.

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On 6/28/2019 at 1:38 PM, hockeyweasel said:

Yeah, I figure this is them trying to transfer the risk from them to us. Their buddies. Their pals. 

Does it suggest that they are obligated through the terms of their agreement with TLG to actually make 2500 of the approved sets?

No it’s off loading product under contractual obligations, it would seem Bricklink purchased parts for 2500 of each design, to be sold by end of june

It’s a commercial enterprise  no buddies, no pals!  That ended years ago.   These sets are good value for money tho...

 

The wholesale site doesn’t include “wild west” or “hot shot” so assume they have sold out

The wholesale site doesn’t include “wild west” or “hot shot” so assume they have sold out

I don't think so, you can still order them at regular price on the main website. There are probably just too few of those remaining to offer them on the wholesale site...

Wild west actually says 70 remaining on it's page

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Oh good. I ordered two more saloons couple days ago.

No it’s off loading product under contractual obligations, it would seem Bricklink purchased parts for 2500 of each design, to be sold by end of june
It’s a commercial enterprise  no buddies, no pals!  That ended years ago.   These sets are good value for money tho...
 

I agree with this. It only makes sense to let go of overstock if they don’t move and they have a deadline. If anything it’s a chance for “their pals” to make money. Given the rest of us have a limit of three nobody is really loosing much money if any. Investors will evaluate which set has potential before going all in.

18 hours ago, Graham Bailey said:

The wholesale site doesn’t include “wild west” or “hot shot” so assume they have sold out

It did a few days ago. Tantalizing

I’m actually surprised that the wholesale store still has plenty of stock of 9 of the designs, yet they still have the “3 per customer” limit in place. 

I wonder what will happen to those that remain unsold? Contractually they cannot sell after midnight PDT, unless they get the agreement of TLG?

There are 500+ of most designs left - that’s a lot of LEGO!  

Has anyone here already received and built the Science Tower? There's no unboxing or build review of it anywhere that I could find online. Just being curious. :)