If you’ve heard of BrickSeek, you likely know it’s a powerful tool for consumers, allowing them to track down inventory and find the best deals at big retailers.
However, once you scratch beneath the surface, you’ll find out there’s a lot more to BrickSeek. Far from just a customer-facing app, it has a lot to offer e-commerce companies.
In this guide, I’m going to explain how e-tailers can start using BrickSeek right now to boost their sales and revenue.
What Is BrickSeek?
I’ve written before about BrickSeek’s feature set and how consumers can use it to find hidden inventory sales, so for a more in-depth explanation of the app, check out my previous article.
However, to give a brief overview, BrickSeek started out in 2014 as a web application enabling LEGO collectors to track down popular sets online and in-store.
Then it branched out, leveraging the same technology to help users find inventory levels, sales, and clearance deals at some of the nation’s largest retailers, including:
- Amazon
- Best Buy
- Lowe’s
- Macy’s
- Office Depot
- Target
- Walmart
Why Should E-Commerce Companies Use BrickSeek?
The same things that make BrickSeek such a useful tool for consumers also make it a potentially invaluable resource for online retailers. Think about it. Wouldn’t you love to know:
- How much of a certain product your biggest rivals have in stock?
- How much other brands are charging for a specific item?
- Which products are being marked down, and in which locations?
- Which products are attracting the most interest from shoppers?
You can find all that information and much more on BrickSeek. In other words, it can be a vital source of competitive information if you know how to use it intelligently. It’s almost like having your own network of spies inside your rivals’ warehouses. Who wouldn’t want that?
Ways E-Commerce Companies Can Use BrickSeek to Increase Revenue and Sales
If you’re an e-commerce store owner, here are a few ways you can use BrickSeek in your business:
1. Use BrickSeek to Help You Set Your Prices
Do you sell the same products as your rivals? Then it’s vital you get your pricing right. After all, 91 percent of consumers say product price impacts their online purchase decisions, ahead of factors like free shipping (78 percent), brand preference (65 percent), and recommendations from friends and family (60 percent).
Set your prices too low and you won’t earn enough margin, which eats into your profits. Set them too high and you won’t drive enough sales. Get them just right and you’re well-placed to increase sales and revenue.
That’s where BrickSeek comes in.
First, search for a product’s stock-keeping unit (SKU) or universal product code (UPC). You can either find this through the website of the retailer in question or by using BrickSeek’s built-in SKU finder:
Then run a search on the SKU, using a zip code that aligns with an area you cover, to be presented with all the pricing information for your chosen product. Now you know how much you can afford to charge.
2. Use BrickSeek to Buy Materials for Cheap
Just because you sell products to consumers doesn’t mean you’re solely a B2C business. After all, your products need to come from somewhere. If you do some of your own manufacturing, you’ll need to source your own materials, too.
In those instances, you can simply access BrickSeek as if you’re a consumer, using the app to track down wholesale-standard prices on the products and materials you require.
3. Save Time Checking Retailer Inventory
Looking for the best prices on products to sell is a time-consuming endeavor. BrickSeek helps you do it faster as you can quickly check the inventory from many different retailers.
Just enter the SKU or UPC using the same steps I described earlier, enter a relevant zip code, then hit “Check Inventory” to immediately see stock and pricing information from a given retailer on a specific product:
4. Discover Hot Sellers
Running a successful e-commerce business hinges mainly on knowing the right products to sell. This is something else BrickSeek can help you with. By checking the inventory of the retailers the platform supports, you can pick trends in products that move fast. That’s an indicator of which products you should consider selling.
5. Monitor Market Trends
The secret to success and longevity in the e-commerce industry is understanding market trends. That’s where BrickSeek’s top product searches feature comes in. By observing the products your customers frequently search for, you can anticipate trends in your niche. Monitoring market trends will help you make data-based decisions to help you stay ahead of the curve and your competitors.
FAQs About BrickSeek
Yes, BrickSeek is a legitimate tool for finding pricing information and inventory levels, as demonstrated by its A- rating from the Better Business Bureau.
While it’s definitely legitimate, BrickSeek isn’t always 100 percent accurate, as with any third-party tool. The site freely admits retailers will not honor inventory or pricing discrepancies between BrickSeek and “real life.”
All the inventory information provided through BrickSeek’s inventory checker is collected in real-time when you do a search.
At the time of writing, the BrickSeek app is in beta testing and is only available to Premium and Extreme members. In other words, you can’t currently access it without a paid BrickSeek account. If you’re a paying subscriber, you can request access to the Android or iOS apps here.
BrickSeek for E-Commerce Companies Conclusion
In less than a decade, BrickSeek has gone from being a simple, niche tool for finding obscure LEGO sets to a potentially mass-market app offering huge value to consumers and retailers alike. That’s some transformation!
Use BrickSeek intelligently, and you can gain unique insights on your biggest rivals, which in turn can help you:
- set competitive pricing
- pick up bargain prices on raw materials and products
- understand when other retailers are struggling to access stock on key product lines
- figure out whether a new product is worth selling based on levels of consumer interest
- keep track of trends in your market
Best of all, BrickSeek is still comparatively underutilized among e-commerce companies. By learning how to make it work for your brand, you can position yourself to beat your competition.
What do you think are the biggest reasons for retailers to start using BrickSee
