Hello!
To use the forum, login or register above.
(If you are already logged in above, please click here)
Will BrickLink survive?
Hello together,
at the end of October of last year I have decided to activate also my shop here at BrickOwl. I have read for a while the forum and tried to find out how BrickOwl works. And since I have activated my shope here at BrickOwl my business has increased to an unexpected level. We're a small shop, but we have received now within 3 months about 190 orders - incredible number for us. In the same time frame we have had only 51 orders at Bricklink. And if I read the forum there I can find a lot of threads like "where's the business gone", "Sales is down", "lower than avarage last year", etc.
Now my question is if Bricklink will survive or is it just luck in my case that I have received that amount of orders at BrickOwl?
What's your experience - maybe someone here who has "moved" the shop also to this site in the past half a year?
Regards,
Oliver.
at the end of October of last year I have decided to activate also my shop here at BrickOwl. I have read for a while the forum and tried to find out how BrickOwl works. And since I have activated my shope here at BrickOwl my business has increased to an unexpected level. We're a small shop, but we have received now within 3 months about 190 orders - incredible number for us. In the same time frame we have had only 51 orders at Bricklink. And if I read the forum there I can find a lot of threads like "where's the business gone", "Sales is down", "lower than avarage last year", etc.
Now my question is if Bricklink will survive or is it just luck in my case that I have received that amount of orders at BrickOwl?
What's your experience - maybe someone here who has "moved" the shop also to this site in the past half a year?
Regards,
Oliver.
Powered by Vanilla
Comments
I'm encouraged by your note - I'm opening my store in phases starting in a few days here vs BL. Almost done with setup...
I wish you continued great success!
I probably get about 10 brickowl orders for every bricklink 1. I was shocked at how many more I get through brickowl compared to bricklink. (I run the same inventory on both sites).
In my personal experience, the catalog here is still difficult to navigate. That is the main reason why I do not order here more.
One reason could be that I am used to BrickLink to much, another is that much of the parts that are on my wanted lists do not have any details in the catalog here. For example, look at the decorated 3001 bricks... For most of the catalog entries I have no idea which brick I would be buying...
https://www.brickowl.com/search/catalog?query=3001&variant_type=1
The number of orders on BrickOwl is 9% GREATER than BrickLink
The dollar $$ amount of orders on BrickOwl is 44% LESS than BrickLink
Orders (quantity and dollar amount) are down about the same percentage from 3 years ago.
So at least for us there is an entirely different type of buyer between the two sites. BrickOwl tends to be for the more casual buyer while the BrickLink has trended to us for the more serious MOC builder. Of course YMMV.
All of us share and agree with your complaint in regards to the catalogue and Lawrence spends a lot of time helping us to get the information right to correct all the short falls. But as with all those that spend a lot of time on the catalogue, there is only so much time to do so, so the more people that pitch in the quicker this problem will disappear.
Brick Owl has been around for a shorter period of time than Brick Link and many old sets are not around to be inventoried and photographed like new sets. So if you have access to these old sets it would be appreciated if you could help out.
I am not trying to call you out by the way - I appreciate that you were simply pointing out a true fact!
But it is also a fact that the more people who help, whether sellers or buyers, the better your experience will be, and in that regard I am taking your comment and putting out to all members of the site to step up and help out - each item added makes the whole site better!
And just remember there are simple things like measurements, dates, descriptions, connections to sets which also help identify an unknown item besides the photograph. So with a few mouse clicks and some typing a part can go from an unknown to known.
Castle.
Yes, plenty of gaps in the catalog, but please do not compare BL's 18 year old catalog with BO's less the 5 years old catalog, just think of how BL would have looked like when it was 5 year old... (and therefor BO's 13 year old 'backlog' compared to that) and think what can be achieved in the next 13 years on BO...
And needless to say that that BL catalog is what it is only because people like *you* helped 'built' it, what would 'stop' you to do exactly that here? After all, that is exactly what some people (besides Admin Lawrence himself) who used to do so on BL are now doing on BO:
https://www.brickowl.com/points
Obviously with a serious backlog and much less active contributors...
Building a catalog can only be achieved by the help of experts, you're one of those, so get to it LOL (good to see you here).
Cheers, Eric
PS Just shout when you're in the blue, always someone around to help out ;-)
For those decorated 3001, I would not know where to start. They are in the catalog, and sellers are offering them for sale so I hope that THEY know which bricks they are, but they are not named with any details and they are not linked to any inventories so I would not know how to identify them. I could provide photos of most of them, but this is not a puzzle that I would like to solve.
As to sellers offering them: yes, because of the 'sync' sellers use, they are listed in their stores, the way they sync allows them to identify those items, for instance I add the BLID on each head, torso, legs, minifigs and many decorated items in my 'remarks', simply because my store is (partially) made based on those numbers, so yes, I can identify my objects, even when there is no image on BO.
And then there are also 'lot ID's' which get imported, handy as well.
For you, being a buyer only, it is indeed nearly impossible to figure that out, but from one contributor to another, if you wanna help and submit pictures (pre 2013), I'll give you full support on giving you any BOID you need... If you wanna work by a set and submit all images from a set (pre 2013) I can add the loose parts to the inventory prior to your uploads, workable as well. Just shout and I'll be there (can't promise daily contact though).
Items 'as of' 2013 are another matter: they need to be created first if they do not exist in the BO database.
> @WoutR How about this: you take pictures of items, you tell me by private mail which BL-ID you made pictures off and have ready to upload and I give you the corresponding BOID, you upload under the BOID and add a description. The other option would be to add the set number on each decorated part wich would 'help' in most cases, but thats a 'titans' job to start with. Every part prior to 2013 is in the catalog, yes, unnamed and unnumbered (thank to BL's policy), but there are ways to find them.
Maybe later. I should be able to make most of the missing 3001* images, but that will take a lot of time that I do not have available right now. Also, I do not have decent lights for photography so I am still depending on natural light for most of my photos. This time of year the light is a challenge.
> As to sellers offering them: yes, because of the 'sync' sellers use, they are listed in their stores, the way they sync allows them to identify those items, for instance I add the BLID on each head, torso, legs, minifigs and many decorated items in my 'remarks', simply because my store is (partially) made based on those numbers, so yes, I can identify my objects, even when there is no image on BO.
> And then there are also 'lot ID's' which get imported, handy as well.
>
> For you, being a buyer only, it is indeed nearly impossible to figure that out, but from one contributor to another, if you wanna help and submit pictures (pre 2013), I'll give you full support on giving you any BOID you need... If you wanna work by a set and submit all images from a set (pre 2013) I can add the loose parts to the inventory prior to your uploads, workable as well. Just shout and I'll be there (can't promise daily contact though).
> Items 'as of' 2013 are another matter: they need to be created first if they do not exist in the BO database.
>
As a buyer, I do not want to install additional software (but if I ever want to transfer my 2000+ part wanted lists over here then that might be my best solution ...)
The synchronisation software is a great tool, but it probably helps the lazy sellers to much :-P
It makes it easy to list these items for sale while the BrickOwl catalog does not really know them. I think that this must reflect in the sales of these parts, they must be much lower here than on BrickLink.
If every seller would add 10 of the missing pre-2013 item names that would make a huge difference. If a small number of people have to do all of that work, then BrickOwl might never catch up. And, to keep in line with the topic of this forum discussion, then BrickLink will remain the most important marketplace for many buyers.
Is there an organized effort being made to fill in the missing information? Or is this left to anyone who happens to have some time and interest to do so? It always amazes me to see how much work can be done in a short time if a few people work on the same project. (I am not volunteering for something like that before I know my way around the catalog.)
What happens when a new part is added to the BrickLink or BrickOwl catalog, but is not available on the other website yet? How does the sync software deal with that? I can imagine that the sync helps people to find the differences between the catalogs (and to do something about those). The sync software can be a great tool to help the active catalog contributors also :-)
YES, YES, YES! This applies to other decorated parts as well. The only way I have found to decipher this puzzle is to submit a new decorated part, get denied, and use the link provided in the email to figure out that it already exists. The admins know which ones they are, but this seems like a lot of work on everyone's part.
Example:
owlqueryblid 3001pb081
INFO: The BLID "3001pb081" resolves to the BOID 764580.
> This month marks our 3rd year on BrickOwl. Some trends that I have seen as the slices of pie get smaller with the increased number of stores here and on BrickLink.
>
> The number of orders on BrickOwl is 9% GREATER than BrickLink
> The dollar $$ amount of orders on BrickOwl is 44% LESS than BrickLink
> Orders (quantity and dollar amount) are down about the same percentage from 3 years ago.
>
> So at least for us there is an entirely different type of buyer between the two sites. BrickOwl tends to be for the more casual buyer while the BrickLink has trended to us for the more serious MOC builder. Of course YMMV.
>
I see similar trends and agree on the typical type of buyer for each site.
@wout is right about the sales of parts that are not identified, but that's not really an issue, as plenty of stuff *is* identified, particulary brand new stuff...
So the lack of 'data' is not preventing to get orders and the total (alltough yes, orders are less 'tuned' by buyers on BO when it comes down to 'filling' up a shipment) turnover amounts are more significant to me then the 'amount of orders' because when it comes down to picking items, basicly it's the same amount of work (the 'packing' time might be different though).
My first order on BO was september 29th 2013: over 30K since then, in that exact same period on BL: about 26K... That's a near 20% difference in favor of (thank you) BO ;-)
@andirunner Every part prior to june 2013 (lets exclude some rare odd and hard to find stuff) is in the BO catalog, no point bothering (just ask here first), most decorated parts (printed by TLG) as of june 2013 are in catalog as well (and linked to sets), the only missing stuff would be 'stickered' parts, but those who got created are with namings (and pictures), so easy to figure out what is missing. Sure, without deeper insight or research (see Stragus suggestion) it's a bit harder to figure out, but like I said to Wout, I'd be happy to help out and makes those links.
When it comes down to linking up 'decorated' items to sets, it's not that hard, but the 'service' BO is offering to so is way too slow and my suggestion to allow 'bulk' changes is not something BO wants to consider out of selfpreservation. With the propper syntax it could be done by the hundreds per week trough Bricksync. In six months it could be dealt with... now it's just way too tedious to actively spend time on it
> What happens when a new part is added to the BrickLink or BrickOwl catalog, but is not available on the other website yet? How does the sync software deal with that? I can imagine that the sync helps people to find the differences between the catalogs (and to do something about those). The sync software can be a great tool to help the active catalog contributors also :-)
there would be 'no match' found by Bricksync, it is then noted in the BS log files ;-)
A simple regular 'explore' of the logs will help sellers to figure out what is missing (might simply be the link between the 2 of them as a matter of fact).
Obviously the item won't sync then in the mean while...
> > What happens when a new part is added to the BrickLink or BrickOwl catalog, but is not available on the other website yet? How does the sync software deal with that? I can imagine that the sync helps people to find the differences between the catalogs (and to do something about those).
If an item isn't found, BrickSync is just going to wait until it becomes available. You can use the command "owlresolve" to attempt to resolve all items previously unresolved on BrickOwl (the program also does that when started and when coming out of "blmaster" mode). The command also lists the items that have and haven't been resolved.
torsos with no arms
stickered items
minifigs with new printed parts not created yet
nexo knight pentagonal tiles...like anybody is going to buy these anyway
> But it is also a fact that the more people who help, whether sellers or buyers, the better your experience will be, and in that regard I am taking your comment and putting out to all members of the site to step up and help out - each item added makes the whole site better!
> And just remember there are simple things like measurements, dates, descriptions, connections to sets which also help identify an unknown item besides the photograph. So with a few mouse clicks and some typing a part can go from an unknown to known.
>
> Castle.
Well said. Please, please people, take this onboard.
I have been editing the catalogue a lot lately but sometimes it feels like there's only a few of us who bother.
It can be a steep learning curve and I make mistakes on a regular basis (I try not to), but the rewards are there for all of us if we can make the effort to contribute.
For example, if a set has two stickered 2x2 red tiles, but they're different, without photos it's not possible to tell which is which. Yes, they have different BO ID #s, but that doesn't help me in determining which is which. I know I'm a novice at this, but I don't want to be submitting things that already exist. I'm totally up for any advice in this regard. :)
i don't know anything about doing a catalog, but it seems to me that many images of sets are the same than those i can see on the Lego shop. Can't have also acces to the images for parts?
The issue being discussed here are older parts which TLG never published publicly (stickered items excluded anyway) as they were from before TLG started putting online 'set inventories'.
So from recent sets (5-8 years) everything is downloadble, older stuff is the problem, but that's 5 decades of uncataloged stuff with a lot of 'gaps' that TLG doesn't fill in on their website simply because it's too old and in most cases no longer available with them either ;-)
But i don't know how to manage both inventories. You manually update your inventories? If you have an order on Bl for example, how do you update your inventory here on BO?
PS: sorry for my english ;)
Add to that 2 Site admins, 2 voluntary catmins and an inventory admin.
Anyway, if you are interested check out our new store.
If Brickowl wants to attract the buyers who are already established on BrickLink, then a more agressive approach to fill in the missing catalog data might be needed.
https://www.brickowl.com/catalog/lego-minifig-statuette-emperor-palpatine-hologram
None for sale here?
The part has been available since 2014. More than 300 sold on BL during the past 6 months.
---
Update: I just found
https://www.brickowl.com/catalog/lego-transparent-light-blue-emperor-palpatine-hologram-hooded-minifig-statuette-16478
Is this a different figure? The images are the same... Is it is the catalog twice?
Question: is it OK to use LEGO images like the main image on https://brickset.com/sets/41040-1/Friends-Advent-Calendar and extract/cut/resize 24 images from this image (and similar images) to use as a subset image? I could do this for all subsets I own and include weight & dimensions.
Another question: I see that advent subsets listed on BO often have 'cardboard box' as packaging type. While this is true for the parent set, the subsets are in a plastic bag. However, this packaging type is currently not supported by BO. Or is this the same as 'foil pack'?