We recently connected with Daniel Barton and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Daniel, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.

Early on, Erin and I talked about how we could expand KC Brick Store’s impact beyond supplying the local community with a LEGO resale store. We are both passionate about the environment and wanted to ensure our store had a positive impact on the world. We believe that businesses are responsible for more than just making money – we need to be part of the solution for making the world a better place. After researching a few different options, we came across the 1% for the Planet organization. 1% for the Planet Business Members agree to donate at least 1% of their annual revenue to environmental non-profits. One of the many great things about 1% for the Planet is that they also have a non-profit network of organizations which have been vetted as trustworthy non-profits. Through this network, we were able to locate local organizations which aligned with our environmental impact goals. We were extremely excited to donate to our first organization just a few weeks ago!

Daniel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Growing up, I always loved playing with LEGO. My brothers and I spent countless hours building various things together. This love of building led me to a career in engineering, specifically software engineering. A few years after college, I rediscovered my enjoyment of LEGO, and my wife and I started watching LEGO Masters. During Season 1, a few of the contestants mentioned that they had met at a used LEGO store. We’d never heard of such a thing, but thought that the idea sounded really cool, so we went and Googled “kansas city used lego store” so we could visit. However, we quickly discovered that no such store existed in our area – in fact, the next closest store was 180 miles away. Sitting in our basement, thoroughly surprised a store didn’t exist, we looked at each other and said, “Why not make one ourselves?” And thus KC Brick Store was born!

KC Brick Store deals in all things LEGO – factory sealed sets, pre-built sets, bulk LEGO, minifigs, specialized parts, and more. If LEGO makes it, we are interested in buying and selling it. We offer a place for kids, parents, or adult collectors to sell off their collection if they are getting out of the hobby, or trade in items towards something else that they really want more. For anything that comes in, we clean and sort it to ensure our customers are getting the highest quality products. If something is unable to be sold at our store (such as off-brand bricks or other toys), we donate them to a local preschool. Through these practices, we extend the playable lifetime of the LEGO bricks and the other toys, ensuring they provide joy to children (and adults) for years to come.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

We’re still in the early days of marketing our business, but the most effective solution so far has been facebook ads and other social media posts. We relied on word-of-mouth early on, which has also been very effective, but facebook ads allows us to target our most likely customers in the area. We have already had many people come in our store saying they saw our ad (or a family member did and shared it with them). The ad has also been very cost-effective. We will likely keep running the ad for some time and then we will re-evaluate. Our hope is that as we grow our page’s following, eventually we will be able to end the ads and rely on our followers to share our posts to broader audiences instead of needing ads to do it for us.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think our customer service and integrity is what has been highlighted most in our reviews. The LEGO community is quite diverse – there are collectors, set builders, moc-builders, casual enthusiasts, and more. Each community’s needs are slightly different – they may be looking for a specific set or minifigure in a certain condition, certain pieces to complete a set, advice on building techniques for a custom build, or sometimes just wanting to chat. We do our best to accommodate each one of those needs and being flexible with trying to meet them as much as we can. We have a ‘wish list’ where if someone is looking for something in particular, we can add them to a list and let them know when it comes in stock. We’ve also helped get specific pieces for people when we have the availability.

Integrity is the other piece of the puzzle. Many resale stores have a reputation for paying really low rates for stock and then charging high prices when it’s re-listed. We’ve been very transparent with our customer base, telling them the percentage we pay, what we’ll list it for, and explaining what we do with the margin from the goods. This has built up trust with our customer base that we are acting in good faith when we’re buying from them, and has led to many repeat sellers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kcbrickstore.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/KCBrickStore/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kcbrickstore
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kcbrickstore