OUR TEAM
We are a family run business.
Myself (Chris) Wife Liz and 2 young children.
We all take a part in the business, The children will pick the parts when an order comes in. The parents will build the gifts and handle any printing and personalisation that needs to be done. Liz will print the postage and I drop the parcels off at the drop off for courier collection.
I also designed and built the website over 9 months and it was painful, learning new skills. But it took time to get the right personalisation app to build in live view the gifts. Which you can see in the video.
THE IDEA
The way this idea evolved to what it is now all started when my current IT Contract came to an abrupt end due to budgets.
The kids birthdays were fast approaching and funds were low, My son was asking for Minecraft LEGO and so I took to my second best friend ( GOOGLE).
I came across a few sites offering cheaper alternatives to LEGO and was surprised at the low cost. So I took a chance and ordered some, sure enough they arrived and all was well. But my head was starting to spin up, thoughts of buying and selling on market places to make a small profit.
After doing some research and realizing the personalisation market is worth Billions a year I needed to work out how to fit Minifigures into that market, There are some already printing their own designs and names on a brick or torso, but none actually elevating that to a frame with a theme and allowing custom parts to be used.
We opted to use Genuine LEGO parts as they had the best range of parts and covered our products idea well. We also use Genuine LEGO in our Crackers as well.
We want to revolutionize the greeting card and personalisation market by replacing a standard piece of card that can get easy damaged, thrown away and the memory for that day forgotten. Our Framed Personalisation gifts which cater for all special occasions are able to be hung on a wall, sat on a shelf or desk.
We give the buyer options to select the background for their frame, which is generally the special occasion ( Birthday) they then select the colour frame and select the parts to build their customised Minifigure which goes in the frame. The Minifigure stands on a brick which the buyer chooses the colour for the brick and then a message to be printed on the brick.
The end result is a great gift, some past customers have complemented they look cute and really nice.
POC
When starting, this project is was a POC and so we purchased a UV printer from China.. The printer did well and proved the business case due to the amount of sales over Valentines and Mothers day. But as all things mechanical, the printer had enough one day and the support from the company is shocking, and so we have a printer that does not work for our flagship products. :-(
EXPANSION
We have recently expanded by creating Christmas crackers with Minifigures inside in a hope to boost sales and keep brand awareness. Some other ideas as well are themed gifts. Using a background such as a coffee shop or boxing ring, accompanied by a special Minifigure build to match the theme, the buyer then has the option to add a Brick message to the gift.
We also want to add an on and off led light to some of the gifts. I did POC this and it was a great idea. Using small parts, LED bulb and a thin battery I was able to blend this in without making the gift look out of place.
RAISED FUNDS
We will use all raised money towards a new UV printer that has better quality, reliability and that has UK support. Any remaining funds will go towards marketing.
If we went for another cheap printer I fear we would have the same problem in 6 months time again. We have seen branded printers now coming in at £6995 and all have UK maintenance and support.
All our products can be seen on our website : - www.brickblocks.co.uk
TESTIMONIALS
We have had 100% positive feedback on over 226 sales on eBay and over 50 on our website.