by littlecranky67
5 subcomments
- As for why, my bet is to prevent "counterfeit" (as Lego would call them) lego parts being shipped by vendors. They target low-income countries, as it is profitable there to import China-made bricks and sell them on Bricklink to make a living.
As a background, there are plenty of chinese lego alternatives, operating mostly legally in the west as the lego patent has expired long ago. Brands such as Mouldking, Cobi, Bluebrixx, CaDa, etc. are available here in Germany even in retail stores and online, and it is perfectly legal to sell "alternative" bricks. Cobi itself manufactures all of its part in the EU (mostly Poland) and creates original designs (mostly War-themed models such as tanks, fighting jets etc. as Lego does not do those).
by aunty_helen
2 subcomments
- Looking at the list of countries, living in one, and knowing how much the west is cracking down on money control. This reeks of anti-money laundering controls.
by helsinkiandrew
1 subcomments
- The site below posted a comment in a Reddit post that seemed to explain the decision:
>We don’t currently have the resources to support Marketplace operations in these areas at the same level as everywhere else,” the statement reads
https://www.brickfanatics.com/lego-is-closing-bricklink-in-3...
- >To put this into perspective, the total combined population of these countries exceed 2.5 billion, or just about 30% of Earth’s population which is wild.
Doesn't look like anybody can make 35% of their revenue from those countries though, does it.
- Greenland is an unusual entry on the list given the nature of Lego as a firm.
by embedding-shape
0 subcomment
- I wonder what the story behind this action is? It's surprisingly short to the shutdown, and they seem to indicate they wanted to keep those markets open, as otherwise I feel like they wouldn't falsely give people hope they might open it up again:
> We will review this decision regularly, and we hope to be able to reopen the BrickLink Marketplace to LEGO® fans in these countries in the future.
Shutting it down in (almost) the entire South America doesn't feel like it makes financial sense, can't be such a small market that it wouldn't be worth keeping it open.
by makeitdouble
1 subcomments
- I get why for some of these countries, but Brazil for instance doesn't look like complicated situation or a small market in any shape of form ?
Is anyone finding relevant political or regulatory patterns in the country list ?
Direct link to the list: https://www.bricklink.com/help.asp?helpID=2687
by altairprime
1 subcomments
- Is this due to the same payment processor issue that was impacting Steam-PayPal users earlier this year? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44891570
- Some really big/rich markets on the list (Brazil, India, ME..).
I don't think LEGO is big in most of those countries (at least not in India), so they might be trying to slow down the secondary market in order to grow sales for new products.
- I've been a member for 25 years (yikes, since it was Brickbay) - I'm not sure why Lego company wouldn't have the resources to handle this compared to the prior smaller company.
by colechristensen
1 subcomments
- no explanation?
by huflungdung
0 subcomment
- [dead]
- [flagged]
by pftburger
1 subcomments
- This is A/B testing. Lego owns bricklink, so they shutter it in a few countries, see how it impacts sales, decide from there
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