LEGO confirms 'real-time production allocation' for BrickLink Designer Program Series 6

The LEGO Group has confirmed that ‘real-time production allocation’ will be in place for Series 6 of the BrickLink Designer Program when crowdfunding begins next week.

Early series of the BrickLink Designer Program typically saw one or two of the most popular sets sell out within hours, while others struggled to reach their maximum capacity of 30,000 pre-orders. For Series 5, the team dynamically adjusted the number of sets available based on how quickly they were selling – a process they intend to implement and refine for future series. 

Speaking to Brick Fanatics and other LEGO fan media in Billund, BrickLink Designer Program Lead Alex Kastelic explained in detail how the total allocation per series works. “We have a very specific production slot that we are allowed to have for each specific series,” he said. That’s a hard 150,000 cap, or 30,000 copies of all five sets. But it doesn’t necessarily need to be evenly distributed.

If one set looks likely to sell just 10,000 sets total – which Alex says is ‘where we would expect an original theme to sell’, compared to something like Castle or Pirates, which ‘have a built-in fanbase already’ – there are 20,000 potential sets going unproduced.

“What we can do is, in real-time, look and see if a set’s trending towards 15,000,” Alex added. “We know a majority of sales happen in the first 36 hours and the last 24 hours of the crowdfunding period. So we can shorten that window, which allows us more flexibility with our production team to get things ready. If something jumps from 30,000 to 50,000, there’s a little bit of extra planning that needs to go into that.”

For Series 5, Adventure in Transylvania proved to be the hot seller and was boosted up to a maximum capacity of 50,000. But Alex stressed that reducing the capacity for other sets will only happen organically. “We guarantee that we will make 30,000 sets if a set sells [that many],” he said. “So each of the finalist models have the ability to sell up to 30,000 still, but that top cap up to 50,000 is totally dependent on the performance of the other models and where they’re at.”

The end result of this change was that all five Series 5 models were available to order for the entire 20-day crowdfunding window. “If you missed it, it was because you just weren’t aware of it, which is a good thing in our eyes,” Alex said. “We want to make sure that anyone who wanted a set was able to get it; it wasn’t because they were at work and couldn’t get off, or they’re in a position where they can’t get away for a couple of hours to go and order a set.”

Alex also confirmed that the progress bars seen in previous series will be removed for Series 6 and beyond. “That’s one of the things that caused some chaos,” he acknowledged. “We weren’t thinking about if we adjust the numbers then all of a sudden the progress numbers are jumping around and that creates confusion as well. So we’ll remove that. It’ll handle a lot more similarly to what you’d see on a normal launch day on LEGO.com.”

That means we won’t know in the moment how many copies of each set are available, one potentially negative consequence of which could be that sets suddenly sell out without warning. But that’s assuming any of the builds in Series 6 will even reach that higher limit of 50,000 – none did in Series 5, so it may be that all five models are simply available for the entire crowdfunding window again.

That window will be even shorter for Series 6, topping out at around seven days. Alex said that will help the team better plan for ‘the variable volumes that we’re working with’.

Crowdfunding for Series 6 begins on October 6 at 8am PT / 4pm BST. Here’s a reminder of what’s going up for pre-order this time round…

LEGO BrickLink Designer Program Series 6 sets

Check out our review of BrickHammer’s Outlaw Forest Den, along with more insights from Alex, over on our YouTube channel.

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