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Hi everyone,
Last year, I started a company called Bricksorters, and I am developing an online application to help improve the current LEGO parts buying experience on BrickLink and BrickOwl. The current core of the business is partly a new online marketplace and partly like a BrickLink store.
As part of this, I am looking for help with a variety of tasks for those passionate and knowledgeable about LEGO. Currently, the things I need help with are:
- Sorting and inventorying LEGO parts
- Frontend and backend website development
- UI/UX and graphic design
- Mechanical/electrical/robotics engineering experience
The time commitment would be up to you and you could work on your schedule. The sorting work is particularly good for anyone with some spare hours to work on things, and I’m open to getting help from responsible teenagers if there is an interest.
I am self-funding the business so I don’t really have cash to pay people at the moment. Instead, I am able to offer payment for services in the form of bricks! Depending on the role, we would agree to an hourly rate, and then I would pay you an equivalent value in bricks.
For example, if the agreed upon hourly rate for sorting was $8 and you worked for 3 hours then you would receive $24 in bricks from the business’s available inventory (based on the current market prices and subject to some limitations). For the brick sorting in particular, I’m open to eventually working out a fee structure based on output vs hours worked, so if you are able to work faster you could earn more per hour.
Once the business starts to earn more revenue, I will be able to switch over to cash payment as I ultimately want to keep the bricks in the business.
There will also be a need for beta testers as the application evolves so if you are not interested in the paid work, eventually I would love to get some real-world feedback from the local LUG community about how the application works. I will post messages about that whenever that time comes.
For those with questions or interested in hearing more, I will be speaking at the quarterly LUG meeting tomorrow. If you cannot attend, please reach out to me directly and let’s set up a time to chat.
Thanks!
-MatthewSorting and inventorying LEGO parts
@carlsonf sounds like your cup of tea! 😀
Let’s say that it takes roughly an hour to sort a pound of LEGO, sorting into broad categories like bricks, slopes, plates, tiles, car parts etc. (In my experience, this is a practical assumption.)
If you are paying $8 (in parts) per hour of work sorting, the parts would have to be acquired at significantly less than $8 per pound, otherwise the result will be giving away the bricks that are sorted to the sorters.
Thanks for the comment. I hadn’t done a deep analysis yet on the time involved so I definitely appreciate the info about what you’ve seen things take timewise. Having it be a wash or possibly a loss has been something I’ve considered. There is definitely going to be a learning curve for this and trying to find ways to make it more efficient is a large part of my interest in the problem.
LEGO made an oversized minifig head that had a couple of sieves built into it – it was meant to sort parts by size. I don’t know how well that particular device worked. However, if you can find a way to physically separate parts, that could reduce the man-hours required. Of course, people ARE successfully selling parts both online and in brick & mortar stores … so it appears feasible with the proper strategies.
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