Business Spotlight: Piecing Together Success

The Springfield franchise of a specialty toy store chain centered on Lego bricks is building on record revenue that has made it a standout among over 200 locations nationwide.  

Phil Vice, franchisee of the local Bricks & Minifigs store he launched in 2023 with his wife, Tiffany, says the shop’s $1.8 million in revenue last year was nearly a 30% increase over 2024. It also was tops among all Bricks & Minifigs stores across the U.S. last year, he says. Based in Orem, Utah, the nationwide chain opened its first store in Battle Ground, Washington in 2010. At its locations, customers can buy, sell and trade new and used Lego pieces, sets and minifigures. Today, Bricks & Minifigs has over 250 locations open in the U.S., with more than 40 listed as coming soon, according to its website.  

The Springfield location is one of three shops operating in Missouri. 

“We’re just pretty busy most of the time,” Vice says of the store at 1570 E. Battlefield Road, Ste. E, in the Galleria Shopping Center. “There’s almost always some Lego fan out there that wants a place to hang out. That’s kind of been our goal is we just want to create that space that feels like a community, and you can come in and meet other Lego fans and hunt parts alongside them.” 

The need for more space was apparent in the first year of opening the store, Vice says, adding that a late 2024 expansion doubled the store’s size to 6,400 square feet, according to past Springfield Business Journal reporting. The franchisees knocked down the wall of the next-door suite, previously occupied by Soulfire Hair Co. & Esthetics LLC, to accommodate the desired growth. Their $50,000 investment allowed more space to display and sell inventory, while also providing a larger party room. The store’s original party room could fit only about 20 people, roughly half of what the expanded space provides. 

“It’s been great. We’ve been able to do a whole lot more of what we like,” Vice says, noting the shop is hosting 60-70 parties and events in the space per month. “We’re currently hiring for more event staff so we can just keep it going all the time. We feel like that’s one of the ways we give back to the community is being able to have cheap or free classes, clubs and events, something for everybody.” 

Some of those events have been corporate teambuilding exercises, Vice says, noting Central Bank, Convoy of Hope and Missouri State University are among past participants. 

“Most of the time they don’t really know much about Lego. By the end of it, they’re super confident in their abilities,” he says. “They kind of feel like a kid again; they get creative as a group.” 

Vice says it wasn’t difficult to fill the store’s expanded space, noting the franchisees still utilize a nearby storage unit filled with Lego items. However, additional expansion isn’t desired, he says. 

“What we’ve been focusing on now is since we don’t really want to grow the square footage, making the best use of that square footage and then just turning the inventory, buying it and pricing it appropriately so that we can serve the community just by keeping the inventory fresh,” he says. 

 Building business 
While Bricks & Minifigs isn’t owned by the Lego Group, Vice says the resale franchise is able to order Lego products directly from the Denmark-based company. 

Inventory is constantly getting replenished at the store, as Vice says at least a dozen people on any given day will bring in Lego items they’re looking to trade or sell. There’s a frequent turnover for used product, he says.  

“For example, our used sets in glass cases will have 700 of them fly off the shelves in a given month,” Vice says of Lego products lining several walls of the store. “So, if you come in the next month, there’s going to be whole new stuff in here.  

“We feel like that means that we’re being fair as a middleman, both on the buying end and the selling end,” he adds. “We have a pretty good grasp on the market.” 

Parker Owens is among those who was a past frequent seller to Bricks & Minifigs when he lived in Columbia. He’d sometimes come down to Springfield and sell as much as 200 pounds of Lego pieces he’d accrued and would get store credit to buy Lego sets. Owens says he soon turned his Lego hobby into a side hustle, Parker’s Brick Builds LLC. Through his venture, Owens started creating custom kits for Bricks & Minifigs stores, the first of which was Vice’s in Springfield.  

Now a Springfield resident himself, Owens says at Vice’s request he made a school bus for a student event the local Bricks & Minifigs was hosting. 

“He kind of planted the idea for me, and I kind of ran with it since then,” he says of Vice inspiring Parker’s Brick Builds. “He’s bought a lot of stuff from me over the years. He’s probably carried at least 30 or 40 different sets that I’ve created.” 

As a vendor, Owens says he has a standard wholesale agreement with Bricks & Minifigs, noting the profit margins vary by product but generally range between 30% and 40%. He says he’s worked with 136 of the franchise stores to date. 

 Transition ahead 
The entry investment to become a Bricks & Minifigs franchisee is on the rise.  

At the time the Vices became franchisees, the Utah-based company had fewer than 60 stores in the U.S., and the franchise fee was $25,000. The couple’s startup costs were $200,000, according to past SBJ reporting. Now, as the store count is heading toward 300, the franchise fee is $40,000 and requires an initial investment of $241,000-$570,000, according to the company website.  

Vice says revenue has grown every year for the store since its opening in early 2023. That trend appears to be on pace for 2026, as revenue is around 20% above last year, he says. 

Even as the local shop’s business continues to grow, Vice says he soon plans to step back from his in-store presence and hand over management to a few of his current 14 employees. 

“I wanted to do it a little bit earlier, but we just kept growing and so I’ve been sticking around,” he says. “But we’re kind of drawing some lines now and saying, ‘Let’s just keep it this size and perfect what we have.’ We’ve been building an internal management team. The goal is by July to hand it over, so I can take a step back and let some other people have a go at running it.” 

Vice, who spent over a decade working for disaster emergency response companies prior to Bricks & Minifigs, says he is looking to devote more time with that through his home-based business, Vice Consulting LLC. His wife continues to work at Mercy Hospital Springfield as an X-ray technician. 

“We’ll still be doing a lot of the fun stuff behind the scenes, the finances and all the bookkeeping,” he says.  

Vice says his consulting work allows him to be remote – perfect for when it requires him to shift attention between two considerably different businesses.  

“That’s why I started the consulting because I wanted to have a little more freedom to pick and choose which projects I took on and have the freedom to be on contract if I wanted to spend more time at home,” he says.