Neo Bikes | Pre-order Update #01
Hey everyone! Glad to have you here on our first pre-order update for Neo Bikes - where we give important updates and provide more insight on the builds themselves, amongst other behind-the-scenes stuff.
Before we begin, let’s take care of some housekeeping.
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Why we’re doing this
EasternBrick was born out of a desire to be able to make more with lego as we were beginning to get a little jaded with the endless amount of blueish grey and dark blueish grey brick sets that were being churned out year on year. I’m a massive Star Wars fan, but as a creative, I found the lego bricks in my inventory to be so dull and dreary that it didn’t inspire me to build anything else from it. The sets you buy tend to play a huge role in how creativity gets fostered.
As a child I remember owning this set which came with the fibre optics kit and I remember this being the best thing ever.
I built so many alternative builds of my own, including but not limited to an electric whisk, a lamp holder, a shotgun with recoil mechanism and ejecting shells. 10 year old me was being enabled to push my creativity as far as I could.
Somewhere along the way, Lego stopped creating these types of sets and shifted their attention to the ones that make them the most profit. It’s natural when you have investors who then apply pressure to help make them more money. At EasternBrick, we’re investorless and we’re passionate about bringing back this type of product, which has a bit of something for everyone - interesting builds, but also varied enough to enable and bring the creativity back into building with legos.
Update on how it’s going
Well, the good news is that Red is selling well.
We knew from the survey that the first month would look something like this, so we’re not too surprised by this.
Sometimes we get multiple orders in other colours only to then receive a support ticket that then confirms the mistake and asks to switch to Red.
We do however have a lot of other colours to pre-sell and so we’d like understand from our community what it is that’s preventing you from ordering the other colours.
So as a way to keep things fun, we’re announcing our monthly giveaway where one lucky person gets a Neo Bikes Creator Set in the colour of your choice (please don’t choose Red 🥲) in exchange for our engagement for the month. To kick things off, we want to know these 2 things:
What would make you interested in pre-ordering another colour?
What other colour would you be interested in pre-ordering?
That’s it. Let us know in the comments below and we will put everyone who responds into a lucky draw and announce the winner in the next update next month. Let us know by 31st Oct to have a chance of getting included in the draw. It doesn’t matter if you’re an existing customer or not, or whether your response is something we end up taking on board, we just want to hear those 2 things and you’ll be entered automatically.
Also, if you weren’t aware, we’re offering humble discounts on multiple orders as a way to make those more attractive. New orders will take into account existing orders, so if you’re keen, the 3rd set will be the first to come with a discount.
This discount is really all we can offer since our margins for this product are pretty tight. We imagine a Run #02 of Neo Bikes (whenever that happens) will see an increase in price, so this is really the best price we’re able to offer in this current configuration.
Q: Did I choose the correct design?
Answer: Yes you did.
We’ve seen a few questions about people asking to confirm that they bought the correct design. I’m here to say that you bought every design since it’s a 5-in-1 set. You can build any one of the designs as we’ll be providing the digital instructions for all five of them. The catch is that you can only build them one-at-a-time.
Q: Why a Creator Set?
As a company, our mission is to make awesome builds more accessible to everyone and one way to do that is by cultivating a stronger community of creators. We know firsthand how painful it can be to source your own bricks and how confusing it is to know which sets you’d need to get to acquire certain parts that you’re looking for. When we developed the idea of a Creator Set, we were thinking about it through the lens of a budding creator, not knowing how or where to start when it came to gathering the parts needed to create their design. With a Creator Set, you can have the confidence that the parts you’re getting are varied enough to produce a range of different designs so that you’re comfortable tackling building your own.
Q: Why not just give enough pieces to make one bike?
Answer: Then we’d have 25 different sets to sell instead of 5.
We debated this one internally quite a lot and eventually decided that the best option was the one we finally settled on. The reason for this is that we need to ensure a minimum order and so we need to be able to find enough people who are interested in the set. With multiple builds in a set, we can appeal to a wider audience and hence find more interest in each set. This helps us bring the price down due to economies of scale and critically, the combined Creator Set still comes in at less than the single LEGO BWM M 1000 RR.
Q: What about the stickers?
I expect these coming updates will be mostly regarding the stickers since that also came up in the survey. To make it clear, we will not be providing any stickers that encroach on others rights, but we will be linking sticker print shops where you can order the stickers you’re looking for. We’re just testing out the options now and will make them available as we begin to settle on a few ones we’d recommend. If anyone has an idea for a source for the artwork, do get in touch with us as we’d love to explore the option.
Something we will be providing though is our own stickers since it’s not really a Cyberpunk bike without its own personalisation.
We’ve created a rough first draft just to get started, but a lot of these probably won’t make the cut. We’ll be looking for feedback and suggestions on what you’d like to see so that we can make sure there’s something there for everyone. This is your chance to help define the actual stickers. We have a bit of time, so we’ll be developing and refining these as we go based on input and feedback from you all.
Q: How big are the bikes?
Answer: Big! Here they are next to a 14” MacBook Pro.
Getting to the final product
If you’re an existing customer, you’ll know that we take a lot of care on the product side even with our limited resources. The SerialBuilder run has been receiving pretty decent reviews and it’s partly because we took the time to improve SerialBuilder’s designs where we could. Even for Run #02, we’re still providing updates to the instructions based on feedback that we receive from customers. This is how we intend to keep running our business and the builds you see will inevitably receive updates and improvements as we gather feedback from our customers, as well as potentially new designs from you all if you’d like to share them.
Timeline
We’re currently here still quite early in the campaign but we will be placing an order to secure our production slot with the factory at the end of the month.
We intend to start shipping in February 2027, and we’ve found a shipping partner that we’re quite happy with so far, so we should hopefully be a bit more on the ball with our shipping estimates.
Let us know what you want to hear about
That’s all for the first update, but we’ll be providing more information as we progress through the campaign. Let us know what you’d like to see and I’ll try to include those in the upcoming updates.
Once again, thank you all for your support, and we hope that we’re able to deliver a set that punches way above its asking price.
Be sure to let us know the following to be in for a chance to win a Neo Bikes Creator Set in the colour of your choice:
What would make you interested in pre-ordering another colour?
What other colour would you be interested in pre-ordering?
Until next time!
Bilal
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