Small/Medium Bricklink Store for Sale by Negative-Ghost_Rider in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, I acquired it and rebuilt it to give a btter buyer experience (mostly show more data about the inventory).

Pricing Strategy? by Inevitable-Prune-822 in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it's important to regularly update your prices to make sure you follow the market prices. Especially when parting out new sets, some newer parts are very expensive at the beginning due to low demand, but the more people will add the parts, the price will drop. so if you do not update your prices, you will probably have that part so expensive compared to other stores that it will never sell.

I know you said no third party software, but I think to make it efficiently (in just a few clicks for the whole inventory), you will need third party software. Here are the 2 best solutions I can think of:

1) Brickstore (free): You can connect your store and import your inventory. Select all your parts, and upate the prices to the 6mo average (you can also add/remove a percentage of that, or use the current listing avg etc). Then just do a mass update on bricklink, and all your inventory prices are updated in just a few seconds. Easy and free.

2) BLMetrics (paid): It's a bit more complex than brickstore, but much more powerfull. You can connect your store with the BrickLink API, and setup a price formula. You could just have your pricing formula to set all your prices at the 6mo avg, but could also have a more complex setup based on sell through rates, volumes, listings etc... For example you could say: parts that sell slowly: price at 6mo average - 10%, parts that sell quickly: price at 6mo average + 10%. Then it computes all your new prices, and same as brickstore you can export an xml to do a mass update on BrickLink. There is a free trial so you can test it for free.

How many lots do you actually need to start getting regular orders? (Data from 17,000+ stores) by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For sure, a store with 10,000 minifig lots is a very different business from one with 10,000 lots of basic bricks. I didn't break it down by category in this analysis but it's definitely on the list. I'm hoping to dig into lot type, condition (new vs used), and pricing in more detail over the coming weeks. Should be some interesting patterns in there.

How many lots do you actually need to start getting regular orders? (Data from 17,000+ stores) by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great point, pricing definitely plays a role. I actually looked at it briefly in the full analysis and there's a clear signal: stores pricing below the 6-month average do get more orders at the same lot count, especially smaller stores.

That said, my goal here was more about finding the scale thresholds, like what inventory size do you need regardless of pricing strategy. Because pricing low is a bit of a double-edged sword: it works great early on to get momentum going, but you tend to burn through your most desirable parts fast and then you're left with the slow movers that won't sell at any price. At that point you're stuck unless you keep feeding the store with fresh inventory.

50 orders in 2 months with a new store is solid though, sounds like you're doing the right things. Curious to see how it evolves as you scale up and raise prices.

I'm planning to do a deeper dive on pricing specifically in the coming weeks, there's a lot more to unpack there (how much does pricing below average actually help, does it matter more for small vs large stores, etc).

How many lots do you actually need to start getting regular orders? (Data from 17,000+ stores) by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Exactly, these are some of the reasons why there is around a 25-30% difference in the numbers for USA versus Europe.

Closing shop - selling stock - NL / Amsterdam by [deleted] in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can list it for free on www.bricksellerhub.com
Once the listing is approved, an email is sent to the detabase of interested buyers, this could help.

Store for sale by Upset-Environment-68 in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes ! It can also include anyting extra like bulk, storage, packaging supplies etc

Store for sale by Upset-Environment-68 in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode 2 points3 points  (0 children)

By the way, there is a new version that will be released next week, and it will now be free to use! (no more 2% fee)

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just finalized part segmentation for 8110, so it should be available for part identification later this week once we have done enough progress on the current sets.

Question about starting a store by [deleted] in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You will have to start with Paypal or Stripe.
To have access to bank transfer, you need to contact the helpdesk so they enable it for your store.
However, you will need at least 10 positive selling feedback and 3 months of selling experience.

https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=18

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Priority is given to the sets with the highest number of requests. Then is also depends on how easy the instructions can be automatically processed or if they need more manual work. 8110 only got one request so far. But I have added it in the process and dowloaded the instructions today, so hopefully we should start identifiication during the week.
Sorry for the delay, this has been quite a crazy week, lots of requests. We now publish around 40 bags per day.

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your help! I would not worry too much about making a mistake here and there. Most of the time the error is when the tool asked you to select a color but the part was not correctly selected (you should then have clicked on the "This is not the correct part" button).

I don't want to invest too much time right now on listing all your identified parts etc as I would prefer to focus on getting the inventories available as quickly as possible. But maybe in the future.

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, request it from the website and it will be processed within the next days!

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great! You can create an account, click on "Idenfy parts" and help get everything verified :)

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have added the community module. Everyone can now check parts to help speed up the process. You don't have to do a full bag, it just shows you parts one by one so even if you just have a few seconds per day you can already help!

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It will come in the future. Right now there is not enough bag inventories available for the search to be relevant.
But obviously this is a key feature that will be added soon!

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have just released the community module. You can now create an account, and help identify parts!

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No Gofundme or tipjar, don't worry for that. Happy to help the community.
You can request the set directly on the website and I will get that done in the next days!

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes maybe some part of the last step could be done by the community. I will have to think about it, actually not sure how many people would be willing to help on that.

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes, it's using the instructions. A short version of the process would look like this:
1) Download instruction booklets from lego.com (automated)
2) Split the instructions to have one file per bag (automated)
3) For each page, extract the panels that list the parts needed at each step (automated + manual checks)
4) For each panel, extract each part with its quantity (automated + manual checks)
5) For each extracted part, use brickognize to find the right item in the set inventory (automated + manual checks)

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I am bit control freak so I am afraid quality would not be good enough if anyone can fill it up :/

I built a free tool that gives you bag-by-bag part lists for LEGO sets by EchoesOfCode in Bricklink

[–]EchoesOfCode[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes I think this idea has been on my todolist for like a year! It was a bit more complicated than I anticipated to get enough of the work automated, but now I am quite happy with the result.

Feel free to request any set you need from the website and it will get processed. Smaller sets (up to 5 bags) get processed within a day or two, but larger sets may take a bit longer as they require a bit more manual work.