BrickLink–a conversation with Tanja Friberg
The pandemic has brought many changes to our daily life. Social distancing, facemasks, lockdowns and other related issues have had a huge impact on our daily activity and not in a very positive way. But every dark cloud has its silver lining, and there are a few things that have improved as a consequence of the current global situation. One of them is easy with which we hop on a video call to talk to the people we would normally work with in the office round the corner… or on the other side of the planet. I’m not saying video calls are great–I’d much rather meet my colleagues in person and Zoom fatigue has become a buzzword—but this “new normal” has had a positive effect on long distance communication that might otherwise have been limited to an email exchange.
After publishing our BrickLink article in HBM036 and asking some additional questions on the LEGO Ambassador Network, Tanja Friberg reached out to us and asked if we would like to set aside some time to talk to her. Of course, we jumped on the opportunity and got busy collecting questions to ask her. And so it was that on a weekday afternoon we set up a virtual link between Spain and Billund to get reacquainted with Tanja and discuss all things BrickLink that were on my mind.
I first met Tanja four years ago, at the 2017 edition of the Fan Media Days. I had travelled to Billund to participate in three days of presentations, roundtables and interviews, hosted by LEGO. At the time Tanja was Head of Events and Programs, part of the team that interacts directly with AFOLs. It was during her time in this department that the LEGO Ambassador Network was transformed from a Facebook style messaging board which made finding and keeping track of information really hard, to the current Invision forum that does a much better job at supporting Ambassador needs. It was in that capacity that I met her during one of the dinners we had at the end of our sessions.
Tanja Started at LEGO in 2012 as IT project Manager. In 2015 she transitioned to a position as Senior Manager of AFOL Relations and Programs; in 2018 she moved on to becoming Head of Events and Programs. That position was still very closely related to AFOLs as it included working closely together with the ANE (AFOL Networking Events), setting up the LAN program, heading up the LEGO Certified Professional Program and taking part in The AFOL Designer Program. This dual experience in management and AFOL engagement was the perfect blend to eventually get her current position as Director of Community Engagement at BrickLink. Still LEGO.
Tanja's avatar on BL comes from this image by Luigi Priori, a long-time collaborator of HispaBrick Magazine
I must admit that when it was announced that Tanja would be the new BrickLink Community Engagement Director for BrickLink I couldn’t help but speculate if our article in HBM036 had been the catalyst that moved LEGO and BrickLink into action to create the position. The reality is of course much less spectacular. LEGO BrickLink had been looking for a suitable candidate, and when Tanja heard about the position, she felt it would be a great opportunity for her so she applied. As Head of the Events and Programs at LEGO she had already worked with BrickLink on the first AFOL Designer Program back in 2019. That first edition of the program was predominantly handled by BrickLink, but LEGO provided conceptual and engagement support as well as delivering the elements required to create the sets for the program. During the time of the ADP and extending into the BrickLink acquisition Tanja had a foot in both the LEGO and BrickLink worlds. With the advent of the BrickLink CE position she saw an opportunity to apply her knowledge of management and experience with the AFOL community to support the future strategic direction for BrickLink. The selection process took a couple of months and so it was coincidence that the announcement of her assignment to BrickLink came within days of publishing our survey.
So what is it like to work for BrickLink? Of course BrickLink is now part of LEGO, but operations are quite different here than for the much larger LEGO Group. Says Tanja: “Day to day operations at LEGO are taking place in clearly defined, well tested processes. You might compare LEGO to a large cruise ship that holds a steady course and takes time for adjustments to have an effect on that course. By comparison, BrickLink is more agile. We can implement changes much faster still being mindful of having proper QA processes in place. Of course, that is not to say that to the end user it may seem like things are still moving slow. A lot of the work we have done since LEGO acquired BrickLink goes virtually unnoticed, but it still needed to be done. Compliance with company guidelines means that many things need to be adjusted. For instance, LEGO doesn’t use the name minifigs, but always uses minifigure. Changing that across all of BrickLink took time, but compliance is important. Of course, that is something the end user doesn’t benefit from, but it is a necessary part of the process.”
Was changing minifig to minifigure really that critical?
We can’t help but wonder how many of these imperceptible changes were deemed more critical than making sure BrickLink is robust and reliable. If the way the LEGO Community Engagement team (the team that communicates with the ambassadors from all the recognised communities) is anything to go by, the new director of BrickLink Community Engagement will not just be communicating towards the community, but also taking the feedback from that community back to BrickLink and, eventually to the LEGO Group. While we can agree that details are important, and the choice to prioritize the changing “minifigs” to “minifigure” undoubtedly smooths the feathers of a legal department focused solely on IP protection and brand representation, this is exactly the kind of prioritization and decision making that has rankled the membership for years now. Going forward it will be important for LEGO to show that it cares deeply about BrickLink users by embracing member input and effecting changes that have practical benefits to users.
One of the things that has a much bigger impact on BrickLink users is taxes. Brexit and the subsequent changes on UK VAT regulations have caused a lot of uncertainty and inconvenience for BrickLink buyers and sellers. Of course I asked Tanja about this: “it has taken us a while to implement VAT rules for the UK on BrickLink, but that is not because we didn’t put a lot of effort into it. Competent authorities have not been able to provide the exact details of the regulation so we could implement this. To this date we don’t have clear answers on some of the issues we requested clarification on.” Confronted with the fact that other platforms have implemented VAT rules much faster, Tanja comments: “I don’t know, perhaps they have more flexible systems and are making changes along the way. We wanted to get a system into place that would faithfully reflect the applicable legislation and there are still questions we have posed that haven’t been answered by the competent authorities. However, we have a solution in place and it seems to all be working according to the necessary guidelines.”
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In the second part of our conversation with Tanja we will touch on some other areas of BrickLink, including its interface, internal structure and programs to effect changes in the platform.
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