Introducing Build a MOC
Posted by Huw,
Build a MOC is website where you can buy kits of other people's MOCs and, of course, make your MOCs available to others, too.
It's run by two AFOLs, Gerardo and Alvaro, in the south of Spain, who started selling parts on the secondary market to finance their LEGO hobby back in 2012. Since then their business has grown considerably and now their store has over 650,000 parts in 10,000 lots.
During this time they have encountered two problems: first, it can be a hassle for buyers wanting to build a particular MOC to source the parts, particularly when multiple sellers are involved. Second, it's also a hassle for MOC designers to sell kits of their sets: sourcing, sorting, packing and so on. So Build a MOC was set up to solve both of them.
Gerardo explains "Many of our customers came to us frustrated by the complexity of buying LEGO bricks for their projects. Dealing with multiple websites for buying bricks and instructions, as well as multiple shops where they need to navigate complicated terms, restrictions and shipping and handling fees, and possible incidences, can be very frustrating and time-consuming.
"For someone who is inexperienced, doesn't have enough time, or doesn't want to deal with it, buying custom LEGO MOCs can be difficult. We aim to solve this problem by becoming a one-stop shop for MOCs and simplifying the process. Purchasing the MOC you love is just one click away.
"We will take care of all the parts, instructions, possible custom stickers, special chromed wheels and much more for them! We do the hard work so that you are able to spend time doing what you love: building a great LEGO MOC."
Of course, to be able to sell kits of MOCs, the company needs to attract and work with MOC designers. "MOC designers are able to easily sell instructions, but they cannot provide for customers who are not well initiated into LEGO.", says Gerardo. "We help them reach a larger audience by making building a MOC accessible to anyone! We also help designers mitigate the problem of potential buyers having to purchase copycat kits, sold with the original instructions without providing any compensation to the designer. 10% of the total sale price of every kit goes directly to the designer."
Gerardo kindly offered to send me a kit so I could evaluate the service. I picked an interesting-looking but small and inexpensive model: a bee, designed by ihurtnow, partly because one of my daughter's nicknames is bee.
It arrived in a sturdy cardboard box.
Parts are contained within a zip-lock bag. Printed instructions are not provided but can be downloaded from the website by logging in to your account.
All the elements are genuine LEGO and are brand new. They are distributed among a number of smaller bags and there is probably some logic to their division but it wasn't obvious. You need to empty them all before you start building.
The instructions are clear and concise and easily on a par with official ones.
My daughter 'bee' built the model and had no trouble doing so. All the parts were present and correct.
This particular kit costs €19 for 157 pieces, which seems like a pretty good price to me. I guess if it was an official set priced at a typical 10c a piece, it would be €15/$15 or thereabouts, so you're paying just €4 to avoid the hassle of sourcing all the parts yourself, and potentially having to pay multiple postage costs, and so on.
In addition to the bee, I was also sent a DeLorien by ZeRadman so I'll get that built and evaluated in the next week or so.
If you're looking for a bigger project, the largest and most expensive kit on offer is a modular neighbourhood, with a whopping 25,000 pieces for a cool €4000!
So, head on over to BuildaMOC.com to see what's on offer.
Finally, Gerardo tells me that "we are looking for new and upcoming designers to join us, so if you want to make your models available to others, you can find out how to do so here!"
Thanks to BuildaMOC for providing the kit for evaluation. All opinions expressed are my own.
Brickset will earn a small commission from sales made via links in this article.
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46 comments on this article
I might actually have to look into this for selling my models that get bunch of instruction requests. 10% seems a little low for us creators to get though...
Nice Idea! But its really expensive. But I understand, thats a taff task to search all the parts together and buy them on other sites etc.
@CM4Sci said:
"I might actually have to look into this for selling my models that get bunch of instruction requests. 10% seems a little low for us creators to get though..."
It's higher than you'd get on LEGO Ideas but of course not the same volume.
Very very interesting, looks like a very professional setup, and the price seems very reasonable. Personally for me I would like nice printed packaging, ideally set specific but not necessarily.
I don’t know why but I’m actually kind of excited about this. Great potential here...
@CCC said:
If anyone is not well initiated into LEGO, I'd suggest they stick with LEGO sets to start with.
I cannot see this stopping certain clone brands selling kits if the designer has put the LDD file or instructions online.
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Hello! We think that everyone should be able to build MOCs. Many of them are not complicated, but part gathering can be. We just recently built the Porsche 911 MOC by buildme, and I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. Someone who also likes Porsche 911s may want to build it, but may not have enough time to do the process of buying the parts.
We give buyers the option of buying an original LEGO kit that supports the designer. Previously, if they wanted to buy the whole kit and not deal with the hassle of buying the parts, they only had one option, to buy a clone kit, now, at least, they have an option!
Also, keep the feedback coming! We already fixed a couple things that you mentioned. :-)
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@rusticjohn packaging for our larger MOCs is custom printed. You will see it on the next review or you can see it on the first picture in this article! :-)
@Huw off topic but you know how you can a set number in the comments, does that also work with reviews? Thanks.
@CM4Sci said:
"I might actually have to look into this for selling my models that get bunch of instruction requests. 10% seems a little low for us creators to get though..."
Sorry, I do totally disagree. If you buy a modular there, it costs roughly 600€, therefore you get 60€ for the instructions! That is more than enough. I have purchased instructions once before at one of the builders on Ebay for 10€. So he earns 6xs as much.
I must say, I'm very intrigued.
While this is a great service, and occupies a nice niche in the aftersales market, I think that as someone else has mentioned, you're going to get in trouble with intellectual property rights if you're not careful.
Anything you sell that would be subject to a licensing agreement between the brand and LEGO, if LEGO made the set is gaining money for yourselves without respecting the rights of the IP holder. For example, LEGO could happily make "big red supercar" without a license agreement, but if they called it a Ferrari, or if it looked substantially like one, they couldn't get away with it.
If challenged, at best you may be asked to remove these items from sale, at worst you may find yourselves the subject of legal action
Edited to add a more positive ending to say that there are some superb designs on there that surpass substantially sets available from LEGO
This looks very tempting and the postage is reasonable for large sets. Are the parcels shipped directly from Spain?
^ Yes
The 650,000 parts in-house is impressive, which means that they are not so much at the mercy of the secondary market as individuals. As for the cost, can easier spend around $1000, a lot of the designs are available on rebrickable if you just want the instructions and they also provide a guide price as to the likely cost of all the components from multiple bricklink sellers, which you can compare against this shop price and determine if you feel this is reasonable.
@Huw "a bee, designed by ihurtnow" link is not working. Also for future maybe there will be good option to put button for reporting errors for articles. In case something is not working or wrong anyone can submit instead of comment :)
btw very nice article :)
Do you know what the shipping would be like for someone in the U.S.? I would love to support this company, because of the reasonable prices, but I may not be able to do shipping.
J aime bien le concept mais à 3 fois plus cher qu ali le choix est vite fait...
@Huw said:
" @CM4Sci said:
"I might actually have to look into this for selling my models that get bunch of instruction requests. 10% seems a little low for us creators to get though..."
It's higher than you'd get on LEGO Ideas but of course not the same volume."
I think its 1% but the guidelines might have changed the last time I've checked
@Cooliocdawg said:
"Do you know what the shipping would be like for someone in the U.S.? I would love to support this company, because of the reasonable prices, but I may not be able to do shipping."
I just added a 56 piece transegrity sculpture by J K Brickworks to my cart to check shipping to Virginia. The small €19,00 set would be €9,99 for shipping. The shipping price stayed the same for up to three small sets. When I added a fourth, it went to €15,00.
@CCC said:
"If anyone is not well initiated into LEGO, I'd suggest they stick with LEGO sets to start with."
I think that’s the idea anyway. The name *Build a MOC* is aimed at FOLs. Non-FOLs wouldn’t know what a ‘MOC’ was or that it relates to LEGO.
@collecman said:
"J aime bien le concept mais à 3 fois plus cher qu ali le choix est vite fait..."
My translation: ‘I quite like the idea but at 3 times more expensive than AliExpress, the choice is an easy one...’
Thanks for the info, I just ordered the Tensegrity Sculpture.
@CCC said:
"IDEAS is 10 sets plus 1% net sales. But of course the number of sales will be huge in comparison to these MOCs.
It is interesting that on Bricklink it is now forbidden to sell custom instructions for Star Wars MOCs, or other licensed MOCs, since these infringe both LEGO and the IP holders rights. "
This seems like it is taken as a grey area by Disney/Lego, otherwise Rebrickable and Brickvault, two places where you can buy custom Star Wars MOC instructions (as well as many other areas, such as Technic cars), would have been shut down long ago. Not to mention Eurobricks where a lot of MOCs with purchaseable instructions are advertised, or even StarBricks, who with their B, TS and U projects have made MOCs into 'limited editions' - there are multiple threads on Eurobricks of people just asking, "Where can I buy x project instructions", who are willing to shell out hundreds of pounds for them.
If Lego/Disney theoretically care about IP infringement in the MOC community, why do they not shut down these sites, or use legal methods to enforce stricter rules on these sites? Most likely they don't believe it's worth it.
I am super proud to have my builds on this site !
Super professional team !
There is definitely a big convenience bonus here although I actually like the general wheeler dealing of sourcing parts from various outlets, working out who has the best deal for certain parts and also the flexibility of changing parts round if what is actually needed is difficult to get hold of. I have just built during lockdown, 3 vintage 1/8th scale F1 cars with instructions sourced from Rebrickable; some of these use very rare parts which are impossible to source new (I recall having to get a pair of dark green curved wedges and there was only 1 pair for sale on Bricklink in Europe!) so I wonder how this service would cope with these eventualities.
Fun idea, although personally I would rather jump from site to site to save a buck, this is something I have thought about. It's a matter of "how much more am I willing to pay to streamline the process?"
@buildamoc if a designer decides to bring a set to you guys does that limit their ability to offer the instructions elsewhere, like on Rebrickable? It would make sense to have a measure of exclusivity, something that isn't available anywhere else...
@Galaxy12_Import said:
"
@buildamoc if a designer decides to bring a set to you guys does that limit their ability to offer the instructions elsewhere, like on Rebrickable? It would make sense to have a measure of exclusivity, something that isn't available anywhere else... "
Not at all! We are here to support designers as well, not to limit their possibilities!
It's a nice idea for people who don't like using Bricklink or Rebrickable to buy some nicely designed sets that they wouldn't otherwise get to enjoy.
Obviously not for everyone but for newly developed AFOL's wanting something different that LEGO doesn't provide it's a good way to start building outside of traditional set purchases. Also, not everyone has the time or the patience to spend hours pricing out parts to build specialist builds for the cheapest way possible.
Interesting! I too wonder about the issues with intellectual property, though. I design scale aircraft among other things and would love to sell instructions for them, but I've never wanted to deal with copyright and licensing and such. It's all a little confusing to me, and I definitely don't want to get into any legal trouble.
I think it's fantastic and have no idea why no one thought of this earlier. However, prices are steep. I'm sure they can be justified but a large, good looking set easily costs well over 500 Euro. That's just a bit too much for me.
Questions for buildamoc:
- can a non-designer request that you source a MOC? If so, do you get the designer’s permission?
- since you need to keep a huge inventory, do you think you’re impacting the ability for builders to find parts (for a reasonable price)? Curious about how you decide which parts you carry, and whether you obtain them from resellers e.g. sellers on BrickLink.
I discovered your site the other day, before seeing this introduction. Pricing seems reasonable considering genuine new Lego parts. I think you have a great idea, and will save a lot on time and shipping cost. If you get big enough, please consider having a distribution center in the US or Canada— that would help the shipping cost and shipping time even more for those of us in North America. (Ordering stuff from Europe is sometimes problematic at this time due to the pandemic.)
Great idea, but holy cow. The cost.
I will stick to buying my own parts/making my own instructions.
That neighborhood.....
People are talking about the utility of this service for people who are already fans of Lego, and I agree that its utility is limited for people who frequently use bricklink already, but I think where a service like this really shines is for people who *arent* lego collectors, but happen to see a MOC they like and want one. Being someone who creates MOCs in properties which do not have a large overlap with the Lego fandom, I do come across people like that from time to time, who dont collect lego, who are interested in buying my MOCs but dont want to go through the hassle of bricklink and probably having to order parts they dont need to meet minimum purchase requirements. I imagine more skilled and prolific builders would see such people more often.
Best of luck to them. That UCS Razor Crest is seriously impressive (and expensive) but it’s the best Star Wars vehicle since the original trilogy and I’d be all over an official UCS version
Was about to order the Sushi Restaurant modular until I saw that the Minifigures from the pictures weren’t included. May reconsider in future.
@gunther_schnitzel said:
"Was about to order the Sushi Restaurant modular until I saw that the Minifigures from the pictures weren’t included. May reconsider in future."
Send us an email and we might be able to do something about this! (hello @buildamoc.com)
@magmafrost - we couldn't have said it better ourselves. I could imagine myself, if I hadn't already been into LEGO and I had seen the amazing Ferrari F12 MOCs by Loxlego, I would have fallen in love with them. However, if I had tried to gather everything without any experience, it would have been impossible! We try to make it easy for newcomers to build LEGO out of official sets.
@CCC said:
""MOC designers are able to easily sell instructions, but they cannot provide for customers who are not well initiated into LEGO."
If anyone is not well initiated into LEGO, I'd suggest they stick with LEGO sets to start with.
"We also help designers mitigate the problem of potential buyers having to purchase copycat kits, sold with the original instructions without providing any compensation to the designer."
I cannot see this stopping certain clone brands selling kits if the designer has put the LDD file or instructions online.
Since the failure of the BL MOC-shop, other larger BL stores have also started similar services. Often the MOCs seem to have cheap parts only and so the 10p/10c ppp limit as a measure of value might not be such a good measure.
And what about IP? That Delorean clearly infringes Universal's intellectual property and both Build a MOC and the designer are profiting from the sale without license. Plus the advert for that set includes pictures of the minifigures, but I am guessing that the MOC comes without them. If so, that is misleading.
Similarly they infringe on Star Wars IP.
They also sell VickHeadz, obviously ripoff Brickheadz and even put the LEGO logo onto these, so are using the LEGO trademark without permission. Plus Marvel too by ripping off their characters. I am really surprised that brickset is advertising such a company. Even LEGO Certified Professionals are not allowed to use the LEGO logo on their sets."
Honestly? I completely agree, especially about IP, the legality of this is VERY doubtful
They want artists to accept a small 10% while they rake in 90%? I think giving 25% is fairer seeing how 10% of small sales quantities is not much.
All these people going on about the lower % given by Lego are not factoring in the large volumes of sales they generate. Yeah, you get less than 10%, but you get tons of sales and that adds up.
Yes, I would like Lego to be fair as well and give the artists more, but they are a huge company with enough money to oppress the artists and the artists say, "okay, I'll agree" because they have little choice.
But 10% from some 2nd hand shop that doesn't show the level of sales they generate feels like going into a pawn shop with a $5000 antique ring and getting only $50 for it when there are alternatives to selling in different ways.
But hey, if an artist wants to gimp by with a small 10% on small sales while someone else makes a ton of money off their work...
@Dursagon said:
"They want artists to accept a small 10% while they rake in 90%? I think giving 25% is fairer seeing how 10% of small sales quantities is not much."
Not the proper comparison. If I build a MOC, I pay the designer for instructions, but he doesn’t get anything from me for the bricks. Especially for large builds, the cost of the instructions is far less than the cost of the bricks. Besides the bricks themselves, you’re paying BuildAMOC for the time and labor of gathering the bricks for you. You think that 90% is pure profit?
For some, part of the fun is chasing down that last 1% of parts needed to complete the build. Some don’t care about genuine parts. Others like to modify MOCs to parts they have on hand. This isn’t for them.
MOC Instructions for the Modular Sushi Bar are EUR 10 on another site which is a fraction of the EUR 60 the designer gets from Build a MOC.
For me the main benefit is saving on postage and saving on my time.
Nice idea and I am sure it's good for some people, but I will never buy something unofficial for twice the price (ppp). It's not like official Lego is not expensive enough. Maybe it's just me but I would never trust the structural integrity of MOCs. Too much unknown and risky for such price and pretty sure it would be very hard to resell (if you have to) for an unofficial product.
I think the site is a good idea, especially for people who really would like to have a MOC and don't have the time or experience to source, or for the more wealthy among us.
However, even with 650 000 parts in stock I think the company will still need to source a lot of parts. With an estimated 400 000 parts I still often need to go to BrickLink to get enough parts in a specific colour to build a certain model or MOC.
@ CCC & furiothecat:
Action figure customizers go even further by making 1:1 copies of Kenner Star Wars figures that were rare or only had prototypes. Even with 1:1 copies of the old packaging.
There are saber builders who sell lightsaber hilts and complete with lights and sounds making hundreds or thousands off of each item. Simple instructions aren’t even really in competition or threaten the market share compared to saber builders that are effectively in competition with Master Replicas, Hasbro and Galaxys Edge Saber Shop by offering superior and sometimes cheaper products.
It’s safe to say Disney doesn’t care (for now?) and other companies appear to make far less money from such licenses so they do not care about the low quantity of fan projects and the few money it might generate.
Licensees sometimes even appear to take inspiration from what is popular in customizer circles, like Hasbro making their own reproductions of old figures while still leaving the custom reproductions alone or Lego selling sculptures and statues with close to zero functions or action features all of the sudden.
First of all, the idea is really good and this concept I have already in mind some time ago as well. The problem is normally, how to realize a concept into actual implementation. And here I observed two issues, more as a positive feedback, and hopefully the owner of the site can think about and improve for the better:
1. The name of the site. Basically, if it's named as Build a MOC. I could guarantee for sure once I say this name to 100 people all around me, likely < 5 people will know what a MOC is. Eh.. what is MOC, is it McDonald's? The target audience should not be towards the geeky Lego collectors who already know MOC because, very likely they are creating also one themselves and knows all about bricklink and the details, and are able to work out the troubles of doing multiple part purchases. The target audience should be those that: Love the Design, do not know or want to work out the details of bricklink. Thus... think about a more generic name that is easy to understand and remember for general public.
2. Price is certainly a concern in my opinion here. Looking through many of the items, they are priced more than a usual official Lego set. Now think about this... if someone buys official Lego set and when they love the design, quite many will not wait for discount and will buy it at original price, that is okay. But if the MOC pricing is even higher than that, it is... again rather difficult to justify the purchase. Looking at the possible margin here, from bricklink's point of view normally when people parted out a set, they will buy those sets for parting out at ~40% off (or there could be even more ways to get it cheaper). So it is already the potential margin. Creating a design is more of a Fun thing and not a Chore, thus the 10% sales percentage share is making sense here for the designers.
In summary, the site name can be re-think about. The pricing can be reduced a bit especially for those expensive sets. The designer's name can be more prominent and highlighted on the page to give the worthy recognition. Think about using the used parts too, personally I don't mind having used parts in the set for these MOC ideas if the pricing is eventually good.
I will sound dumb to Lego fanatics, but what does MOC mean? It would have been nice to explain at least the abbreviation in the article.
@tsa said:
"I will sound dumb to Lego fanatics, but what does MOC mean? It would have been nice to explain at least the abbreviation in the article."
My Own Creation. It is a term to mean custom build.
No dumb questions.
I have emailed Buildamoc and asked various questions. I have learned the following (among other things):
1. Pricing of sets will definitely go up if rarer parts are used. I have seen some sets on their site that are reasonably priced. It looks like those sets use pretty easy to source parts. Sure, they are not official sets, but the cost is no more than going to BL for the parts.
2. The 10% seems reasonable to me. Buildamoc does all the work (after the set is developed). 10% for each sale means $5 on a $50 set. I expect instructions to cost that. If a set is more expensive, the profits are even more for the designer. So, Buildamoc creates a way for others to get instructions and parts. Many people will pass on buying instructions alone unless they are into sourcing parts, or have a mountain of them already. This can draw in new customers.
3. For people designing sets, this can be a great way to make some extra cash. If an artist is not happy with 10%, there are other ways to make money. But, for those that are not trying to make a living on Lego MOCs, I think this is great. I make some designs for myself, but now I can make sure they have easy to get parts, then let my design make some extra cash for me via Buildamoc.
4. I plan to post some of my designs with them. But, I will make sure each model describes the fact that I have actually built the set with actual parts and can confirm the sturdiness of it, and with the colors shown. I do not know if Buildamoc will develop a type of checklist for others to see what has been verified when looking at a model, but I suggest they do. Something like Colors Confirmed, Built IRL, Instructions Confirmed through actual build...
5. This will make sure my instructions and parts list are even better as I will not want to make a bad name for myself with customers. This means I need to verify my parts lists with the modern colors (light grey vs light bluish grey, for example), and part numbers with modern ones all so I can have them source the lower cost parts that work just as well. I think Buildamoc should have a way for reviews of sets to rate many of these things after purchase (Instructions clear, Parts list complete, Colors consistent...).