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The approved vendor list

CONFIRMEDthe franchise agreement lets BAM take rebates from the suppliers it designates, and keep all of themCONFIRMEDBAM is the sole supplier of every branded item a store sells, a line worth $1,362,791 in 2025

Primary sources: the Bricks & Minifigs franchise agreement as filed in the public court record, Law and Gorman v. BAM Franchising, Utah Business and Chancery Court No. 260200029, Exhibit B; BAM Franchising Franchise Disclosure Documents, Items 7, 8 and 21, five editions; BAM’s own franchisee help desk. Related: the disclosure document read against itself, the support portal, The disclosure.

A Bricks & Minifigs franchisee builds the store to the company’s specifications, buys from suppliers the company designates, and gets every branded item from the company itself. The contract they sign also lets the company collect rebates from those designated suppliers and keep one hundred percent of them. The list of approved vendors is not attached to that contract. The clause about the money coming back off the list is.

What the contract reserves CONFIRMED

Section 4 is the buildout section. It tells a franchisee what the store must look like and who may build it. It closes with this:

“Franchisor reserves the right to receive rebates, commissions or other forms of consideration from designated or approved suppliers involved in the construction or fixturing of the Store and to use such rebates, commissions or other consideration in any way Franchisor deems appropriate in Franchisor’s sole discretion, without obligation to share or remit any portion of such rebates, commissions or other consideration to Franchisee.”

The franchisee pays for that buildout. Item 7 puts fixtures and furnishings alone at $16,500 to $41,375. The company picks the supplier. If money flows back on that spend, it is the company’s to keep, at its sole discretion, with no duty to mention it. The same agreement can require a franchisee to use “an Approved Supplier” even to find the site.

What Item 8 discloses CONFIRMED

Item 8 is the section the federal franchise rule reserves for exactly this: what a franchisee must buy, from whom, and what the franchisor gets for steering it. BAM’s says the company is “the only supplier of all promotional, marketing and company-branded materials” and that franchisees “must purchase” them “from us.”

On money coming back it says two things: that “no affiliates of BAM derived any revenue, rebates or other material consideration based on the required purchases,” and that “in the past, we receive rebates from our designated merchant processor.”

Set that beside Section 4 and the gap is exact. The denial covers affiliates, on required purchases. The clause reserves the rebate to the franchisor itself, on construction and fixturing. Neither word reaches it. The one rebate the document does name is a merchant processor, in the past tense, and it is not the buildout money.

The money that is disclosed CONFIRMED

BAM sells to its own franchisees, so that revenue sits in the audited statements attached to its disclosure documents. It grows from $33,562 in 2016 to $1,362,791 in 2025, about fortyfold. As a share of total revenue it peaked near 20 percent in 2022 and sits near 10 percent now, because the rest of the business grew faster. The compelled purchase is disclosed. The margin inside it is not.

The affiliate language moved, too. In 2017 it read “we and our affiliates.” From 2018, “we.” By 2024 and 2026, a flat denial that any affiliate took anything.

The directory PRIMARY SOURCE

That the list exists is not in doubt. BAM documents it in its own login-free help desk: there is a BAM Vendor Directory, every store already has the “Franchise-Wide vendors” loaded into its point-of-sale system, each one carries a company-assigned vendor code, and when the company adds a supplier it pushes that supplier to every store. Anything a franchisee sources on their own is filed under a catch-all: Retail, Store-to-Store, or Store Exclusive Vendor, the last defined as vendors “not specifically endorsed by BAM Franchising.” By the company’s own taxonomy, a store owner’s own suppliers are the exception.

Here is what the directory routes those stores to, by what each one sells. These are ordinary businesses, many of them well known in the LEGO aftermarket, and none is accused of anything: being on a franchisor’s vendor list says nothing about the vendor.

Two things stand out, neither about any company on the list. The first is how much of a store it reaches: not just the collectible stock a LEGO reseller obviously needs, but the display cases, the signage, the fixtures, the cups and candy, the uniforms and the print. The second is who is missing. The largest supplier in the system is the franchisor, and the only part of that visible from outside is the $1,362,791 line above.

The two suppliers the disclosure document never names PRIMARY SOURCE

Onboarding introduces two more, before the disclosure document is ever delivered and behind a confidentiality agreement. A real-estate firm, Morrow Hill, offered to franchisees “at no extra cost.” A funding firm, Tenet Financial Group, presented on the retirement-account rollover path. Both appear in the Brand Review deck BAM authored as confidential and left publicly reachable, which this site has posted in full. Item 8 governs recommended suppliers. Item 10 governs financing a franchisor arranges, directly or indirectly. Neither firm is named in either.

In fairness: requiring franchisees to buy from designated suppliers is ordinary franchising, and so is a franchisor taking rebates from them. The federal rule forbids neither. It asks that both be disclosed, so a buyer can price them before signing. That is the question here, and it is answered on the four corners of BAM’s own documents. Whether BAM has ever actually collected a construction or fixturing rebate is not established by these papers: the agreement reserves the right, and the disclosure document does not squarely address it. No vendor named above is accused of anything. On whether the roster conceals owners connected to the people behind the enterprise, nothing of the kind has been established, and nothing of the kind is claimed.

Sources. The franchise agreement is the copy in the public court record, filed as Exhibit B in Law and Gorman v. BAM Franchising, Inc., Utah Business and Chancery Court No. 260200029. Item 7, Item 8, the affiliate representation and the direct-to-franchisee revenue figures are from BAM Franchising Franchise Disclosure Documents and the audited financial statements attached to them, 2016 through 2026 editions, read side by side in the disclosure document read against itself. The vendor-directory structure and the vendor codes are from BAM’s own franchisee help desk, captured in full on July 23, 2026 and mirrored at the support portal. Morrow Hill and Tenet Financial Group are named in BAM’s Brand Review onboarding deck, posted here in full. The federal requirements are 16 CFR 436.5(h) and 436.5(j), published by the Federal Register. Vendor links go to each company’s own site; where a site blocks automated checks it is named without a link. Every store in the system, with the point-of-sale instance it runs on, is on the map.

The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; the criminal charges referenced are unadjudicated and every defendant is presumed innocent. Sources are linked so readers can check the record.  ·  Home · Map · The law · Bodycam