What's Going On?

Papa Pearson

I haven't had an order here in BO in 2 weeks. Slow in BL too, but I am getting consistent orders there. This time of year is a bit slower than usual, but I have never gone this long without an order here. Is everyone way down on BO or is it just me? Could it be the economy/inflation keeping buyers away? Just like most everyone else, I had to raise my shipping costs when the USPS raised theirs, but my part prices haven't changed. There are a lot of new stores since I started here (2 years ago) so there is more competition, but 2 weeks with no new orders seems really odd to me.

Hoddie

Most people have much less disposable income right now. And probably for a few months.

Bricks-Shop

Hey,
It's difficult to give a reason. There could be so many reasons: economic crises, war in Europe, Inflation, etc.
We can also see slower sales since 3 months - we think the people are mainly unsure what the future will look like. Our stock is about 350k parts. But we can see still the same for some high runners like minifigure parts (head, torso, legs, supplements) and normal bricks (2x4, 2x2, 1x4). As soon as we have listed these items they are directly sold out.

Regards,
Oliver.

Calibrick

While we've had the slowest summer since opening 4 years ago, I am starting to pick back up a little bit. Am also seeing much smaller orders than are typical, save from my precious repeat customers.

Inflation and rising costs due to lingering supply chain issues, not enough labor in the intl shipping market, the enormous number of container ships scrapped during Covid, increased gas costs due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, etc. really continues to impact folks's disposable income internationally. I'm certainly buying less.

Compounding this is the swathe of new sellers that are either selling their personal stock so can go in wildly cheap, or are not legally running their store (US Law: you MUST register and report as a business if you are selling anything with a profit intent; differs from "garage sales" in that you intend to eventually restock) and paying Federal taxes on the business (allowing them to sell at such dramatically low rates - us legal businesses simply cannot hope to compete with the impossibly low prices they go in at). I've noticed a few folks also selling insanely high quantities of parts from specific sets (new) - my guess is they are former TLG employees or managed to obtain them thru some other interesting means.

So it's definitely a double tap, I would imagine on both platforms. BL does have a larger user base and the advantage of TLG advertising/ownership, so the slowdown is less observable over there but it seems like it's also noticeable.

Neiljones

Hi all hope everyone is well, being new to selling. About 5 months I have been getting orders every week. I can only go by what I am getting my orders are going up but value is slightly down.

Graham

You are not alone worst year since opening - do get 4-5x volume on B/L but still very slow.

Not surprising tho - folks are hurting with prices going thru the roof - first thing to be cut is non-essential purchases.