An Entrepreneur Builds a Multimillion Dollar Business with Lego Pieces

[jon.a]

Good ideas abound...
https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/adv...-multimillion-dollar-toy-store-221707864.html

 

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[Tiago]

I love this idea. Simple, solves needs, has a win/win in it. Boom

 

[jon.a]

I love this idea. Simple, solves needs, has a win/win in it. Boom

The missing piece algorithm is pretty good.

 

[robotunicr0n]

I'm impressed by his turnaround time of 2.5 minutes to sanitize and replace parts. That's some heavy and EXTREMELY high profit automation that he's had his team develop. This is a fantastic example of why you should hire experts instead of trying to figure it all out yourself.

 

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[Lawrence Barse]

Fantastic Idea!! and a wise move to he recruited former Netflix COO Tom Dillon to his board and several Netflix employees to help him build a technology infrastructure.

 

[Gale4rc]

I think the key take away here is that none of us could've created this business.

Why?

Because it's not in our domain of expertise! This was something he was interested in and knew the market, not just a random idea!

Take away: Build off what you know, not what you don't know.

 

[Tiago]

I think the key take away here is that none of us could've created this business.

Why?

Because it's not in our domain of expertise! This was something he was interested in and knew the market, not just a random idea!

Take away: Build off what you know, not what you don't know.

I don't quite get that. I think any of us here could've started that business.

 

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[Gale4rc]

I don't quite get that. I think any of us here could've started that business.

Because you're not understanding what I said, read it Again without ego.

 

[Tiago]

Why do you assume ego had any part in my post? If that's what you took out of it, I'm sorry, I must've said that wrong.What I mean is, I don't understand what you said. Why couldn't any of us start that business, even if it was a random idea?

 

[jon.a]

I think the key take away here is that none of us could've created this business.

Why?

Because it's not in our domain of expertise! This was something he was interested in and knew the market, not just a random idea!

Take away: Build off what you know, not what you don't know.

I think that you miss-read the article. I disagree that none of us could have done it. I believe that few of us could have done it. Why, because of the process that he had to create and implement. It took real work to create his business. Challenging but not impossible.

 

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[Gale4rc]

Why do you assume ego had any part in my post? If that's what you took out of it, I'm sorry, I must've said that wrong.What I mean is, I don't understand what you said. Why couldn't any of us start that business, even if it was a random idea?

I think that you miss-read the article. I disagree that none of us could have done it. I believe that few of us could have done it. Why, because of the process that he had to create and implement. It took real work to create his business. Challenging but not impossible.

Sorry, clearly i'm being unclear and I take back that comment Tiago.


What i'm saying is none of us could've created it because none of us would've came up with the idea in the first place. This guy got the idea because it was directly related to what was happening in his life.

Same with Facebook - Z didn't just go out on a tangent creating a website and hoped people joined, he was a college kid who created it for himself directly from his college experience.

Just to be even more clear - I'm not saying you can't create something successful that's outside of your experience. Just that it's easier when creating from something that you KNOW i.e. MJ's limo business didn't come up out of thin air - it came from him driving around limos all day.

 

[Tiago]

I'm very much thinking of doing this model in Brazil. Huge market, nothing like this yet. Requires a lot of capital to start, but raising capital will be fairly easy.

 

[H. Palmer]

Brilliant idea.

In fact I am going to take a serious look at this, because I recently shipped my first LEGO box to a customer.

 

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[Joe Cassandra]

I am intrigued this work, there was a shark tank episode where a team of moms tried the Netflix of toys.

They went bankrupt due to many returns, cleanliness, stuff breaking etc.

Wonder how he avoided those same issues (instead of breaking legos, losing many pieces etc.)

I would have to find the article (on my phone...)

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

 

[Tiago]

I would love to see that episode @Joe Cassandra !

 

[Joe Cassandra]

I would love to see that episode @Joe Cassandra !

Took some finding!
Here's the episode: They are the first ones, called Toygaroo

Just google Toygaroo bankruptcy and you'll see a ton of issues they had. Here's one:
http://sharktankblog.com/toygaroo-bankruptcy-update-from-former-cto/

Some of it was logistics it sounded like, they got overwhelmed with the shipping costs and put too low a price point.

Edit: As a note, this was the most public failure of Shark Tank ever

 

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[Tiago]

"The numbers of sets that come in incomplete is not insignificant, but we have propriety technology and equipment in place to identify the missing pieces using sophisticated and patented weight algorithm and replacing the pieces the recreate the set. We are taking this one step further and ensuring that all the sets leaving our facilities are 100% complete." - http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/2014/03/22/collaborative-pioneer-an-inside-interview-with-elina-furman-founder-of-pley/

This is a patented process. Does anyone know a way to work around this?

 

[biophase]

"The numbers of sets that come in incomplete is not insignificant, but we have propriety technology and equipment in place to identify the missing pieces using sophisticated and patented weight algorithm and replacing the pieces the recreate the set. We are taking this one step further and ensuring that all the sets leaving our facilities are 100% complete." - http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/2014/03/22/collaborative-pioneer-an-inside-interview-with-elina-furman-founder-of-pley/

This is a patented process. Does anyone know a way to work around this?

Just come up with your own process and algorithm. Figure out another way to find out if there are missing pieces.

 

[DeletedUser12]

This is a patented process. Does anyone know a way to work around this?

They are using weight, use optical recognition instead.

 

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[Tiago]

They are using weight, use optical recognition instead.

Yeah I was thinking about that. Have every piece of every set scanned and let a laser eye do the work and see if there are pieces missing.I've contacted LEGO to see if they have wholesale and if so, which themes and what the MOQ is.

 

[sbinnc]

Good for him


I've thought about similar ideas years back over renting carious things but at the time even there were a fair share of compediators and most are out of business now, renting things can be a nightmare

 

[Mattie]

Everyone loves Lego's. You can't go wrong!

 

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[Late Bloomer]

Original post's link is now dead, but the link to the bankruptcy news still works.

I saw some videos on youtube, and some companion blog posts, from someone who built an automated recognizer/sorter for lego pieces. But I think that was after this company's bankruptcy, and not for a lego business. Was it related? Was this company the one with the rig where you could dump in a pile of random legos and get neatly sorted legos out?