For Doug and Connor Phares, building LEGO sets was more than a pastime. It was a bonding experience for the father and son.
Since becoming business partners, the two men have opened Bricks & Minifigs franchise locations in Clearwater and Brandon. Acquiring the St. Petersburg store, at 2775 Tyrone Blvd., was a logical next step for their Bricktopia Tampa Bay company.
The shop will officially reopen this week under the Phares family’s management. A celebration will take place Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Bricks & Minifigs is an authorized toy franchise that sells LEGO items. In 2010, the first store opened in Battle Ground, Washington.
Doug Phares has spent a majority of his career in the corporate world. For years, he was involved in the news publishing industry. However, Phares saw an opportunity in pursuing a small business venture.
Teaming up with Connor was an offer he could not refuse. Doug and Connor initially purchased a boat rental business. This would only last for so long. According to Doug, it simply wasn’t the right fit for his family.
From left, Doug and Connor Phares.
“We decided we wanted to do more business together,” he explained. “We started looking around and Brick and Minifigs was just really starting to emerge as a franchise system.”
In April 2024, Bricktopia Tampa Bay opened its flagship store in Clearwater. However, the Phares family is based in the St. Petersburg area. The Tyrone location was attractive for multiple reasons.
“As we looked at Clearwater and all of Pinellas County, we realized it’s a different market than the Tampa area,” Phares said. “We recognized that there is so much synergy that could happen between these stores.”
“We already see customers going back and forth,” he continued. “We’d like to be able to move products back and forth and do a lot of marketing and events between the two. The more we talked about that, the more it just became apparent that we need to own both.”
Doug has been a fan of LEGOs since he was a child. It was only natural to share the experience with Connor. Phares and his wife began purchasing LEGO products for Connor once he was old enough.
Initially, Doug would build most of the sets as Connor watched. However, this eventually changed when Connor was home sick with strep throat one day and spent his free time working on a Star Wars set.
“That is the memory that really resonates with me,” Phares said. “It went from me buying things for my son to build that I wanted to him actually wanting to do it himself.”
While Bricks & Minifigs is a licensed LEGO retailer, it is not a traditional “LEGO store” or a big box experience.
“We cannot be as exhaustive as Target,” Phares said. “We don’t have enough space and LEGO doesn’t give us access to everything. So, we don’t have every set that’s for sale every day. We have a curated collection of brand new items. What we really specialize in is resale.”
“We purchase people’s retired sets, things they’ve built, their mini figures and their leftover bricks,” he explained. “We clean them and put them back out and that makes for a very unique inventory.”
Phares added that this can bring back memories for customers, whether they see a set they previously owned or one they wanted as a child.
“People are offloading their collections because something is changing in their lives or they want to do something different,” he said. “We bring them in and make them available for someone else to have joy. It’s the continuous recycling of LEGO magic.”
Bricks & Minifigs St. Pete location website