Brick Diversity is a Christchurch based brick toy online store and importer, specialising in bricks compatible with LEGO® bricks. It is operated by myself Sam and my wife Lillian, with good help from our girls.
Background
I had the good fortune to be introduced to LEGO at an early age while growing up in Iceland, and having younger brothers I kept on building LEGO until about 17 years old. Few years back, with two young daughters, I found a reason to got back into it.
Since then I spent a lot of my time researching and checking out the Brick world. The community of AFOL (Adults Fan of LEGO) is wonderful and welcoming, with an active community here in New Zealand.
Having lived in China, where Lillian is from, it didn't take us long to come across some "clone" brands. We purchased few of them out of curiosity, and were amazed. In short, most of these brands were not the evil pirates so often claimed by hard core LEGO supporters.
We decided to create Brick Diversity to help others get access to less expensive brick-sets.
Our Goal
Most of us can go online and purchase orders from anywhere in the world. However, it takes time and knowledge, to get the right thing. Brick Diversity has the goal to the following:
- We find the brands!
- We test the quality of the bricks and designs!
- We research the design origin, to fight piracy (stolen designs)
- We provide support to our customers
- We keep up to date with the 'brick-world'
- We hope to provide information and educational content to fight misinformations
- We hope to have regular Build & Play sessions around Selwyn and Christchurch
Story so far
Brick Diversity was formed in December 2017, as a part of HanSam Trading Ltd. We imported several sets from XingBao, and we are the only confirmed authorised reseller of their product in New Zealand. Of course I had to build most of the sets and was truly amazed by how good the bricks were.
At the same time we embarked on establishing The Kiwi Viking, a fast food restaurant in the centre of Christchurch. For a while, Brick Diversity had to take a back seat, though most of my free time still went into researching and building.
This year though we have come back to this full on, with Lillian working close to full time connecting with suppliers and makers in China, along with researching every single set we import.
We have added Enlighten to our portfolio, and more brands are coming. Every two weeks we receive a shipment, and sales are doubling every month.
Where to from here
Brick Diversity is a small family business, and might stay that way. Mostly we want to enjoy this and to ensure our customers are enjoying their builds. We want to continue upgrading our sales processes and marketing processes, to provide us the ability to grow in a sustainable way.
There are some plans to go out there and expose kids and adults to these bricks, while just how we do that is not worked out yet.
Beyond that, we will just have to wait and see - and we will listen to you, the customer, as to what you would want to be added to our goals.