Twice Built Family,

I am not going to use AI for this one. This one comes from the heart.

Twice Built has been around for many years, through a couple of owner-families. It has always been family owned and operated…just a different family. The current owners bought it in May 2025. We made a go of it at “Retail 1.” We added stock, added capacity, added online, and we brought it to break even, but could not go beyond that because of the location and space (the online lever was the only way to break even). LEGOs take up a lot of shelf space, and we could not get enough sets displayed. So in July of 2026 we moved the majority of our operations to “Retail 2,” the location adjacent to Swim Kids, on Fairfield Road. We intended to use Retail 1 for storage, online orders, shipping, cleaning LEGOs, and staging sets in preparation for holidays and sales. We reorganized the space and started moving sets in.

We had a significant amount of inventory and equipment in the space.

On September 12, 2026, we got an interesting text from the property manager. “The tenant above you has a toilet leak, you may have a bit of water damage if you can go check it out.” I was just about to load my truck with about $40,000 in LEGO sets to bring into the space and get ready for Q4 at Retail 2. Luckily, I just jumped in my truck and headed up. The leak turned out to be a water line break. They had improperly sealed the water line to the bathroom and filled the entire ceiling above our unit with water, before it all came down. It was raining in our beloved store, on our equipment, and on our LEGOs. When I looked through the glass, I didn’t know what was going on – gravel everywhere, water inches high…I didn’t know if it was sewer or fresh water, so I could not rescue anything. I just watched and waited, helplessly.

Long story short, building maintenance had no clue this was going on. They thought it was just a small leak. It wasn’t…Twice Built at Retail 1 is gone.

For all of you who have spent hours in that store, searching for pieces, talking shop with Simon, Tucker, or Bryon, buying sets, buying minifigs, correcting our errors, giving us suggestions – thank you. None of it was wasted. We used that to build Retail 2. Retail 1 is now a memory, sooner than expected.

Now we need your help. We need to know what you think we should do with the inventory. Teresa at Chubb Insurance has been GREAT to work with. I had to spend a lot of time teaching her about LEGO retired sets, minifigs, bulk, etc., so she understood the valuations. We recovered a little, but the majority of the recovery will come from customers as we work to sell the bricks that were in the rain. There was NO sewage, NO asbestos, NO chemicals. All the water was fresh, culinary water.

Some boxes escaped damage entirely, and I removed those on that Saturday. I was not able to get into the space again until the following Saturday. The restoration company went to work immediately, and started to dry the place out, but we have a lot of warped boxes, some of which were falling apart. There are some that have that “wet” smell.

For now, we would like some input on what you, as our customers, would be interested in. Should we open all the damaged boxes and build them and sell as used complete? Should we discount and sell the warped (but DRY!!) boxes? We know that we cannot recover the New, Sealed pricing…but what would you, as a customer, like to buy? We could even break it all down and sell it as bulk and minifigs. Suggestions welcome!

This also does hurt us in Q4. A lot of this was being staged for the Christmas season. Most of it was retired and cannot be replaced without us losing money. So we will do our best for Christmas and keep the shelves full, but the faster we can sell this inventory, the faster we can get to recovering for Q4. Thus, we also need ideas on how we can sell this in the next few weeks for recovery.

We love LEGO. We love our customers. We love this store, wherever it is. We know we have suffered an inconvenience, but we are insured, no one was injured, and we had another location. We are not asking for handouts, or even sympathy. We just don’t want to let our friends and community down this holiday season. They’ve come to trust Twice Built for great selection, great prices, and great people.