Now the startup is taking an additional feature from Lego by giving its subscribers a chance to design their own sets. “We’re democratizing creativity,” Pley Chief Executive Officer Ranan Lachman says. “Until now, the types of sets available were controlled by Lego corporate guys.”The new online platform, dubbed PleyWorld, will allow Lego enthusiasts to upload pictures of their custom designs, whether it’s a Star Wars–inspired hovercraft or a bust of LeBron James.
Any user-made model that receives 5,000 votes will become available as a set from Pley in two weeks, and subscribers who pay at least $10 per month will be able to borrow it. Lego also has a crowdsourcing website, which it launched in 2008 with a similar voter-driven process. Any user-made model with 10,000 votes becomes eligible for production by Lego.
Pley has two master builders on staff to reverse-engineer a winning design based on the pictures. The resulting kits will then be shipped from the company’s Santa Clara, Calif., warehouse, and the designer’s name will be stamped on the boxes. “It becomes a product in a very short period of time,” Ranan said. Not only does the process sidestep big-company bureaucracy, it gets kits into circulation that even Lego doesn’t offer.
Pley recently raised $10 million in Series B funding, led by Sozo Ventures, to expand into Europe and Asia. First will come Germany and either South Korea or Japan, places in which Ranan expects to find considerable interest. In the United States, Pley has 50,000 customers paying from $10 for one midsize set per month to $50 for an unlimited arrangement that includes premium sets retailing for more than $300. Any kids that want to keep a particular shipment can buy it at a discount. Otherwise, the kit goes back to the warehouse, where the blocks are sanitized and weighed (to determine if pieces were lost), and mailed to the next child.
There are no legal barriers to renting out Lego pieces. As with a car, once you own the pieces, you have the right to rent or sell them. Lego doesn’t seem to be shaking in its boots yet. In 2012, it overtook Hasbro to become the world’s second-largest toy company, behind Mattel. In the first half of 2014 revenue soared 11 percent, mostly because of the success of The Lego Movie.
Pley stands only to benefit from Lego’s enduring popularity: The greater the demand for the pricey blocks, the larger the market for cheaper alternatives to buying them. -Bloomberg
