The LEGO Group is preparing to pilot a ‘MOC Pop-Up Store’, which will offer the opportunity to purchase individual elements for rejected BrickLink Designer Program sets.
Launching in August and running through November, the MOC Pop-Up Store will allow BrickLink members to buy fan designs that didn’t make the grade in the first and second series of the BrickLink Designer Program. The crowdfunding scheme is currently midway through Series 2, with the judging panel selecting the five finalists that will open for pre-orders in 2024.
A total of 190 submissions are in contention in the second series, so there are 185 that will never be available to crowdfund (and ship in official LEGO boxes). The MOC Pop-Up Store will give the community a chance to build a select number of those models by purchasing digital instructions directly from the designer, then ordering the necessary parts through BrickLink and Pick a Brick.
The platform says it will ‘do the heavy lifting’ by finding a combination of BrickLink stores and Pick a Brick elements to give shoppers the best possible price, then adding everything together into a single cart for checkout. There’s no word yet on exactly how many designs from Series 1 and 2 will be available to purchase, but the LEGO Group (which owns BrickLink) says it’s inviting specific builders – so you can’t apply directly to sell your build through the MOC Pop-Up Store.
Each of the chosen designs will have its own product page in the MOC Pop-Up Store, and their designers will earn 80% of the revenue generated from the sales of their building instructions. Revenue generated on the pieces will go directly to BrickLink sellers and, if purchasing through Pick a Brick, the LEGO Group.
Sets will still be screened by BrickLink and the LEGO Group before being put up for sale, but it sounds like that internal review will only determine whether the models use currently-available pieces, and whether the digital building instructions meet the company’s standards. Testing for stability, build experience and so on will presumably remain exclusive to BrickLink Designer Program finalists.
The first batch of sets released through the MOC Pop-Up Store will be available from late August until mid-November. If the trial is successful, the LEGO Group says future sets should be available for around six months, depending on element availability – but because BrickLink Designer Program submissions use a specific palette of pieces, the company is confident there will be an ‘adequate supply of LEGO bricks’ to fulfil orders in the short term.
The chosen models will only be available for direct fulfilment in the UK, USA, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, a decision taken to ‘simplify’ the pilot program.
You can find out more about the MOC Pop-Up Store over at BrickLink, where you’ll also be able to read through one of the most comprehensive FAQs in recent memory. And if you’re wondering: MOC is an ancient LEGO community acronym for ‘My Own Creation’, essentially meaning a custom build. Hope that clears that up.
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