Posted By Adam White on Nov 21, 2019 | 1 comment

On Wednesday night I made the trip to Birmingham to get an advanced sneak peek at the latest UK LEGO® store. The new store can be found within the Bullring & Grand Central Shopping Centre, but isn’t the first time Birmingham has had a LEGO store. There was on in the city many years ago, which closes down. More recently, Brum got a taste for bricks, with the LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre and its on-site store. But the Bullring store is a dedicated brand store, so it will offer VIP points, exclusive sets and events, only found within LEGO stores.

The store is a decent enough size, the few stores I’ve visited in the past, have often often been quite narrow. When they are busy it can feel a little overwhelming, but the Birmingham store is quite wide and almost L shaped so the tills and PaB wall are nicely set away from the main shopfloor. All this combines makes the store feel quite big, it will be interesting to see how it feels, when full of customers.

The store offers a few things already found in other stores such as the a Build A Minifigure station (which has the awesome Halloween elements), a fairly decent sized Pick-a-Brick wall and a set scanner, which lets you bring a set to life by holding the box up to it. But the store also boasts a couple of firsts. The entire store is wrapped in a continuous bank of screens, these are above the shelves and act as dynamic point of sale. So they highlight themes locations, in-store offers and other things like adverts, birthday songs and at night it will show sleeping Minifigures. So even when the store is closed there is something to see. This digital ribbon is complimented but a special new lighting system which can be used to bring unique atmosphere to the store.

I got to chat with Marius Lang who is Head of Marketing, Senior Director at LEGO, along with Stephane Knapp who is Head of EMEA Marketing, LEGO Retail. They both seemed very pleased with their latest retail location and feel it compliments the Discovery Centre store. As the UK’s second largest city, the draw to open a store there again was strong. With planning beginning over a year ago. The new concepts such as the visual display wrap could be introduced in future stores as well as being added to current locations, where possible. The aim to open more stores and make them offer a shopping experience instead of just somewhere to buy sets.

Rather interestingly, Marius added that the Rebuild the World campaign will continue into 2020 and form a big part of future in-store activities. The store is currently taking part in the Build to Give campaign, which is also inspired by Rebuild the World. The Birmingham store has an area for you to build an ornament and a tree to display it on. I built a dragonfly reindeer. I also got to build a trio of Minifigures, with the store having a new mix of elements, including some of those brand store exclusive pieces. I also got to fill my first ever Pick-a-brick cup! The store has a great mix of pieces, check out Brick Central LUG’s video to get a taste of the pieces on offer. I also got to build the store opening exclusive Bullring Bull and a I Love Birmingham Store title, which will be available to the first 500 customers during the Grand Opening event.

It’s a great little store and well located, with it being right near a main entrance. As the only be as store in central England, it will have to service a fair few LEGO fans. I certainly recommend taking a trip to Birmingham to check it out. The store opens today and will receive it’s grand opening event next month.

Thanks to LEGO UK and Mischief for inviting me along to the preview opening event.