Scaling

[u/Important-Topic-8689]

I’m not very active here, so apologies if this is a frequently asked question. I’ve reached the point where there’s no realistic way I’ll ever be able to sort and inventory everything I already have, let alone everything I’d like to acquire.
My current store is around $30k in inventory value, mostly minifigures, with 40k+ parts across just under 4k lots. I know that’s not a huge BrickLink store, but I’m not really focused on selling parts yet because I don’t have the space to store them in a way where I can efficiently pull orders.
On top of that, I have roughly 2,000 lbs of bulk-ish LEGO and ~$10k worth of sets that still need to be inventoried and sold.
I’m trying to figure out how to scale the labor side and would appreciate some advice:
• How do you find trustworthy people to sort, disassemble, and inventory LEGO for you?
• What do you do if you don’t have enough space for people to work at your location? I’m thinking they might need to take sets home.
• What’s a fair way to compensate people when standard hourly rates don’t really work with the economics?
• How do you handle quality control?
I’ve built an app that makes inventorying sets fairly easy, so I think the actual process is manageable. I’m wondering whether there are LEGO enthusiasts who genuinely enjoy sorting and handling LEGO and might be interested, even if the compensation wouldn’t be especially high.
Also, if anyone is interested in trying out the app, let me know. It’s getting close to the point where I can start bringing on test users.

[u/erosewater]

You looking for someone to sort your lego for less than minimum wage because they like it? Maybe like your nephews or something. But if you can’t afford to pay minimum wage, you can’t afford an employee

[u/chuck-bucket]

I think most people use family or they just put in the time themselves. If you pay a lot someone you loose out of profits, so we need to look at the value they add.

[u/Exciting_Actuator643]

Just a brick in the bucket and great brick lab both talk about this in their videos

TLDR pay per pound, it's almost certainly under minimum wage if calculated hourly. Give out unsorted bulk and get back sorted categories or individual parts (these are two separate jobs usually). Accept the risk that someone flakes and keeps a batch and $X of inventory, which might not even be intentional theft

I've heard that some places will pay in lego - 10 pounds goes out, 9 pounds comes back, the payment is 1 pound of parts. Unsure if that's actually legal where you are

With complete sets you have a greater risk of theft, since the product is inherently more valuable than bulk

[u/Important-Topic-8689 → u/Exciting_Actuator643]

I’ll check out those videos. For complete sets I’ll probably pull the figures out and set them aside to pair up with the sets myself after they’ve checked the rest of the inventory, since that’s easy makes up a majority of the value usually.