Greg Spence of Brickcessories Talks Building a LEGO Business in Corbin — Live from CorbinCon

PropertyTales

Greg Spence, founder of Brickcessories in Corbin, Kentucky, joins Barrett Freeman and Andrew Conn live at CorbinCon 2026 to discuss building

Key takeaways

• Moving from high-cost Southern California to Corbin, Kentucky, significantly reduced overhead—cutting monthly rent by half and lowering material transport costs.
• Brickcessories evolved from a board game accessories brand (The Broken Token) during the pandemic, capitalizing on Greg's personal hobby of collecting LEGO sets.

Main topics

• Transition from San Diego to Corbin for cost savings
• Building a business around LEGO collectibles and display cases

Notable quotes

"We're all e-commerce, right? Our customers love that we make our stuff in the U.S., but they don't really care what state it comes from."

Conclusion

Greg Spence demonstrates how personal passion, strategic relocation, and adapting to

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) We're at the first ever Property Tales podcast at Corbin Con. Right. It's at the arena now. It's crazy. So there will be a little bit ambient noise. Not much we can do about that. But these are the same microphones that Taylor Swift uses for her concerts. Really? They Speaker 2 (0:17) got to be good then. Speaker 3 (0:17) They will be good. And there's noise canceling. Speaker 2 (0:20) So Speaker 3 (0:20) that's why the pointy end needs to be pointed at your mouth. Yeah. So Speaker 2 (0:23) yours is pointed up just a bit. Yeah. Make sure the pointy end's at your. There we go. Speaker 3 (0:27) What's that saying? With the sword? Use the pointy end? Speaker 2 (0:30) Yeah. Yeah, you got to use the good end. It wants to twist back out just a little bit. So Speaker 3 (0:36) we just bought that mic stand for today. Yeah. Because in my studio, everything's pretty Speaker 2 (0:41) stationary. So what's the name of your company? So the company is The Broken Token. We have a few different brands. We have a brand called Brickcessories. And then locally, we're doing a lot of work under a brand, Cumberland Craftworks. Because those brands are specific to certain kind of products we make, right? So, yeah, we're kind of doing things under a few different names. But Speaker 3 (1:01) you actually, so we're in Corbin, Speaker 2 (1:02) Kentucky. You moved your company from San Diego a Speaker 3 (1:04) few Speaker 2 (1:05) years ago. Right, yeah, in 2023. Why did you make that move? A lot of the reason was really kind of cost-related. Right. You know, personally, I wanted to get back to this area of Speaker 3 (1:15) the Speaker 2 (1:15) country because our family, my wife's family is still in Tennessee, mine are in northern Georgia. So we wanted to move back this way. But, yeah, running a manufacturing company in Southern California has its challenges. I can't imagine. And we're all e-commerce, right? So our customers, they love that we make our stuff in the U.S., but they don't really care what state it comes from. So we were looking for, you know, where could we manufacture our stuff and save a little more money. And Corbin is, you know, a lot more central to the U.S., so shipping's cheaper. And, you know, it's just a great place to have a business, really. What was the rent Speaker 3 (1:47) difference from San Diego to Corbin? Speaker 2 (1:49) Our building in San Diego, our mortgage on it was about $14,000 a month. And here we're half that. Gosh. So that was a big difference in savings. And actually, our material costs went down a little bit, too, because of transportation. Some of the stuff that we were bringing in was just having to move further to get out there to California. So some of that cost went down, too. Speaker 1 (2:13) So what is some of the stuff that you do make? So under the brand Speaker 2 (2:17) The Broken Token, we started out making accessories for tabletop board games. So we're kind of all in that board game geeky market. We make board game organizers, upgraded components for your games, all kinds of neat stuff for tabletop board gaming. And it's the creature comforts you did need. Speaker 3 (2:35) Yeah. That you didn't know you didn't need. No, exactly. I mean, this is the way that I used to think about it. Speaker 2 (2:39) We Speaker 3 (2:39) started Speaker 2 (2:40) doing this in like 2013 and kind of the way that I like to think about it. When we got into this, every hobby you could think about, no matter what you did, whether it was golf or like hiking or whatever, if you were into this, you could take your. extra income and you could put it into things that made that hobby better you know you could you know buy nicer versions of this that and the other yeah when it came to board gaming that didn't really exist all you could do is like buy other games yeah there was no real like upgrades and so we started creating like metal tokens to replace the cardboard ones that come with games and so if you really loved Speaker 3 (3:14) certain board games Speaker 2 (3:15) you could invest in it more and make a better experience oh and that you know that did well with people and it just kind of grew so Speaker 3 (3:23) Yeah, monopoly with a lifetime guarantee. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, Speaker 2 (3:27) yeah, so about the time of COVID, you know, like a lot of things changed for a lot of companies. And, you know, all the board gaming convention stopped for a couple of years, and that really affected that. marketing cycle. So we started looking at how could we diversify and do other things with our manufacturing capabilities. And a lot of times these are like my hobbies turned into businesses. The other thing that I was really into was collecting some of these really nice like collector Lego sets and I wanted better ways to display them. So we started making display cases and display stands for collectibles. And we launched that under the brand Brickcessories because it didn't really fit the broken token at the time. So that's kind of how that brand came about. So was COVID part of the reason why you moved east? I mean, I guess you could say it kind of factored into it a little bit because after COVID, you know, we downsized a little bit. We didn't need quite as big a building. We had less production employees and we were looking for ways we could save money and keep our prices, you know, down. It did affect material prices. You know, for a lot of people, raw materials went up and that affected us too. So, yeah, that was part of it for sure. Man. How come you didn't go to Tennessee where family lived? Speaker 3 (4:40) A few different reasons. I mean, I'm Speaker 2 (4:43) not a deeper Speaker 1 (4:43) here. Speaker 3 (4:44) What's Speaker 2 (4:44) that? Speaker 3 (4:44) Was it Speaker 2 (4:45) cheaper here? I mean, yeah. I mean, that was part of it, too. I was friends with the guys that owned the American greeting card building. And so they were like, Hey, we have a lot of space. You should come check this out. And I came out here and met with them and saw the space. So it was a really good situation to get into, you know, like plenty of room, new people here. There was a lot of kind of things we could do together as far as sharing resources and stuff like that. And they were also in the gaming industry. It was a nice fit to come out this way. Speaker 3 (5:16) Shockingly, Andrew lives in the Lexington area, so there's Speaker 2 (5:19) no Speaker 3 (5:19) Corbin that well. But shockingly, Corbin's become a little bit of an e-commerce toy hub. Really? Yeah. We have Speaker 2 (5:25) a lot of different companies that do just that. Yeah, like Troll and Toad being here and a lot of other companies that do. Collectible cards and board gaming. Yeah, it's kind of become a little hub for this area, which is super cool. It is Speaker 1 (5:37) cool. Speaker 3 (5:38) It doesn't Speaker 2 (5:38) make any sense, but I'm not complaining. Speaker 1 (5:39) Yeah, I bet places like this, like the Comic-Con, I mean, these are your people. These are your customers here. So do you have a booth here at this Comic-Con? We do. Speaker 2 (5:51) Yeah, we're right over here on the first aisle. When you come in, we've got a booth over there, and we're kind of just showing. the different products that we make. We're also doing the merch for Corbin, uh, for Corbin con over there. So we're selling all the hats and the, the t-shirts from our booth as well. Heck Speaker 1 (6:07) yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 (6:08) We'll, uh, we'll go over there and get some Speaker 3 (6:09) B roll of your booth too. Andrew looking around. Speaker 1 (6:13) Oh yeah. Dude, I done, I done spent, uh, $22 on Pokemon and I don't even know what Pokemon really is. It's easy to do. Speaker 3 (6:21) He's got an 11 year old Speaker 1 (6:22) son. Speaker 2 (6:23) Yeah. Speaker 3 (6:23) Does Speaker 1 (6:23) your son like that stuff? Yeah. Just give them to him. I mean, But, I mean, I don't know a lot about everything that's going on here. I was a big sports kid growing up. Yeah. Which I did have Pokemon growing up, but... I think there's some sports card booths here, too. Yeah, Speaker 2 (6:40) I've Speaker 1 (6:40) seen a lot of sports card booths. There's Speaker 2 (6:43) a lot of cool collectible stuff, and I'm sure you'll run into... There's a guy over here that has old school Transformers, and so I'm sure you'll run into stuff where you're like, oh, man, I had those as a kid. So do you Speaker 1 (6:53) do, like, other than this? You know, Comic-Con, do you travel to different Comic-Cons? Before Speaker 2 (7:01) 2001, we did. We would do sometimes 13 or 14 shows a year. When that kind of slowed down because of COVID and all that, we stopped the