Bricklink has been sold

Bricklink, that institution that we of the LEGO fan community have all grown to love is changing hands.

Eliska Jezkova, mother of the late Daniel Jezek (founder of Bricklink), has stepped down as CEO of Bricklink and handed off the reins to Jung-Ju “Jay” Kim, an avid LEGO fan in his own right and founder of Nexon, one of the world’s largest online game companies.

A shudder ran through me when I first saw the news, which will most likely go viral very shortly. And were it not for Eliska’s own words on the matter, I would be more worried about the transition:

I completely endorse Jay to take the reins of BrickLink. He has the knowledge, resources and capabilities needed for the job. He has a passion, not just for all things LEGO, but also for BrickLink. Like most of you, he has been a member of the community for years. He has tremendous respect for what Dan accomplished while he was alive. He also has a compelling desire to carry forward Dan’s vision and his guiding principles that were laid down more than a decade ago. Jay and his team are ready to work toward “BrickLink 2.0”, as well as continuing hardware architecture and application upgrades.

It’s a bright future for BrickLink, and I intend to be a part of it along with the rest of the BrickLink Community. Larry and I will be staying on in an advisory-consulting role to the new owners. Eric Smith will be staying on as Admin to ensure a smooth, seamless transition with minimal interruption.

Part of that transition will include relocation of the BrickLink site to a different data center. Later today you will learn more about that server relocation and the migration schedule, which has been carefully designed to minimize downtime.

It’s been a great three years. I did my best and I am sorry that the hacking incidents waylaid us from doing more, earlier. I am proud of the amazing growth of BrickLink, thanks to all of you.

Jung-Ju “Jay” Kim’s words give me further hope that this in the end will be a good thing.

Dear BrickLink Community,

I am extremely pleased to be taking over the operations of BrickLink.com. I’ve been a LEGO fan for 40 years and an avid user of BrickLink.com for over a decade. My first plans are to upgrade the website, and do our best to make users happier and more prosperous, while staying true to the original vision of BrickLink.com founder, Daniel Jezek. We will work hard in order to ensure that BrickLink.com becomes stable, secure and as user-friendly as possible.

You can read the full announcement on Bricklink.

For those of you who don’t know what Bricklink is, well according to Google it is — a fan-operated online marketplace specialized for LEGO sets, parts, and related products. For many of us who have used it consistently it is the one website that transformed the LEGO hobby. It transformed the way we could acquire large amounts of LEGO, and allowed us to sell what we didn’t want and find that one part that we did. Until LEGO’s official Pick A Brick came along, many years after Bricklink’s inception, the only way to get multiples of a part was to buy multiple sets. You may get 5 or 10 or 20 of what you wanted, but you’d get dozens of parts you didn’t want or need.

Bricklink was, and still is, the best way to get the exact LEGO parts and quantities of those parts for a project. Sure there’s Ebay, and in fact, Ebay even sued Bricklink many years ago over their original name of Brickbay because it had already gotten too large and they didn’t want the confusion. But Ebay is not Bricklink and never will be. Many of the sellers on there don’t always know what they have. What they claim is LEGO ends up being some clone or imitation. You don’t always know what condition the parts are in or if that big assortment of parts you find actually has anything of use.

I can attest that Bricklink not only is integral for my hobby, but also for my business as well. Were it not for Bricklink the supplies of bricks and elements I need for what I create and sell would not be so easily acquired. Especially in the large quantities I routinely order. I thank Eliska Jezkova and Dan Jezek for the amazing thing that Bricklink is and I look forward to seeing what Jung-Ju “Jay” Kim does to improve it.

Tags: Bricklink, Dan Jezek, Ebay, Google, LEGO, LEGO bricks, LEGO Collectible Minifigures, LEGO hobby, LEGO store, Model Building Secrets, Nexon, Pick-a-brick