Every Bricks & Minifigs store pays 1% of its revenue into the fund, every month, whatever it sold. At the Q3 town hall, Katelyn Fagan, BAM’s marketing lead, told the stores that money has to “build up” before national marketing can start. The company’s own disclosure documents describe the same fund, and three years of them are below, next to her answer.
PRIMARY SOURCEthe marketing lead, Q3 town hall: “we need to build up the money that’s being collected in the national marketing fund before we can do national marketing”CONFIRMEDthree disclosure documents, Item 11: “The franchise spent all of the advertising funds collected,” the same sentence each year; the 2026 filing repeats the 2025 figure, $92,405, under a table that shows money left overCONFIRMEDthe fund’s terms, 2026 filing: “not audited,” spent at BAM’s “sole discretion,” company-owned stores exempt, council members “determined by appointment by us,” vendors approved partly on “contributions or other benefits to us and/or any marketing fund”PRIMARY SOURCEthe same meeting, on the rewards program the fees pay for: legacy stores in the pilot were “more heavily impacted… maybe not to the extent it was” expected; full rollout “if it is 2027, it would be like very early Q1”
“Another questioning on the marketing side of things, uh, while we still have you, uh, with all of the marketing initiatives that were shown to us today, um, is there going to be an increased cost to franchisees or how much is this going to cost to franchisees?”
“Um, I don’t, I mean, just your normal 1% national marketing fees. Um, that’s generally where most of these initiatives should be paid from, um, obviously corporate staff is a different item. Um, but that’s being accounted for. And so I’m kind of being planned out and some of the reality is too, like some of the plan and the rollouts are strategic, uh, in that, you know, we can’t run as fast as we want because we need to build up the money that’s being collected in the national marketing fund before we can do national marketing. You know, running TV spots is very expensive, especially to do it consistently, let alone doing omni-channel marketing. We’re running national advertising, international advertising at scale across multiple different channels. So it’s kind of built into the plan of that scalability based on projected stores that are open and how much revenue will be coming into the national marketing fund.”
The answer says two things. National marketing has to wait: “we need to build up the money.” National marketing is already running: “at scale across multiple different channels.” The plan is sized on stores that do not exist yet, “based on projected stores that are open.” This is the meeting that surveyed its owners 54% “extremely unsure” and described a system for moving struggling ones out. The stores that exist pay now.
Each year’s disclosure document prints a summary of the fund’s last fiscal year. Three are in the record.
| Item 11, as printed | FY2022 | FY2024 | FY2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stores paid in | $35,907 | $494,745 | $815,859 |
| Fund spent | $147,482 | $529,913 | $766,901 |
| Printed as “excess of expenses over contributions” | $(111,575) | $(35,168) | $(48,958) |
| Company money added, per the sentence under the table | $114,860 | $92,405 | $92,405 |
The sentence, from the 2026 filing: “The franchise spent all of the advertising funds collected. In addition, the franchise spent additional funds from their operational accounts (amounting to $92,405) to fund Media Placements for the benefit of all of the stores.” The 2023 and 2025 filings carry the same sentence, word for word, with their own figure.
The fund has never built up. Every filed year, the company says it spent everything the stores paid in and added its own money on top. The filing reserves the right to hold money back and let it “be accrued into the next year.” It never once has.
This year’s sentence is last year’s. The $92,405 the company says it added in fiscal 2025 is the same $92,405 it said it added in fiscal 2024.
And it contradicts its own table. The 2026 table shows the stores paid in more than the fund spent, with $48,958 left. The sentence under it says the fund “spent all” and needed $92,405 more. Either way, the answer to the town hall fails. If the table is right, the fund had money left and was already spending 69% on media placement. If the sentence is right, nothing is building. The filing is a document the company signs; the disclosure record holds its other year-over-year contradictions.
The filing’s own terms, in one place.
| The filing says | What it means for the stores |
|---|---|
| The fund exists “to support ongoing technology and new product development,” and for advertising “as we, in our sole discretion, may deem appropriate.” | The marketing fund can pay for the company’s technology. Her list included OneShop, a “customer data platform,” Canva, and the SOCi platform. |
| It may cover BAM’s “reasonable salaries, administrative costs, travel expenses and overhead.” | She told the room “corporate staff is a different item.” The filing lets the fund pay for staff. In fiscal 2025 it reported $7,168 of administrative expense. |
| “We administer the fund, which is not audited.” | Nobody checks the numbers above. An “annual un-audited statement” is available on written request. |
| “Company-owned Businesses are not required to contribute to the Brand Fund.” | Every store the company takes over, eight in two years by its own count, stops paying in for as long as the company owns it. |
| The Franchisee Advisory Council “will serve only in an advisory capacity,” its membership “determined by appointment by us,” and it “will not have any written documents.” | The franchisee voice is appointed by BAM and keeps no papers. The company announced a board with no franchisee voice at all the same week. |
| Vendors are approved partly on “contributions or other benefits to us and/or any marketing fund.” If a required vendor pays allowances, “we may place the funds in the Brand Fund.” | The stores pay in. The vendors they must buy from are approved partly on what they pay in. The company spends it, unaudited. |
| “Mandatory Minimum Payments. You must make minimum royalty or advertising fund payments regardless of your sales levels.” | The 1% is due whether the store made money or not, on top of the 3% each store must spend on local advertising. The stores whose losses the CEO found “harder to establish” pay it on the way down. |
The biggest of the day’s initiatives is a customer rewards program: points earned at one store, spent at another. A franchisee asked whether it would still launch this quarter, since she had just placed it in 2027.
“there’s a lot that’s been going on with the rollout of this, the pilot has been extended in Houston market. You know, we were like two months, we’re good to go.… we’ve slowed things down strategically because we want to make sure the efficacy of the program is as intended, um, to make sure that we’re doing the proper analysis before we just roll it out. And so we can account account for any random things that come up in terms of, um, the redistribution of funds and how to make that more equitable across the system, because we know that we saw some legacy, legacy stores in the Houston area who were kind of more heavily impacted, which was expected, but maybe not to the extent it was. And we want to also know when it starts to stabilize. There’s a series of questions that we want to make sure we have concrete answers or like feel very safe and confident in before we just roll this out because we don’t want to negatively impact any of you. That is definitely not the goal with this. Um, we’re seeing enough positives though, to roll it out to Texas and we’ll see how that market goes, take the learnings from that and be strategic then with the rollout for the whole country. Obviously timing and Q4 obviously matters a lot too. Um, I would love to roll it out as soon as possible, but I don’t want there to be hiccups, mistakes or things that we haven’t accounted for. And that’s why the pilot has kind of slowed down. If it is 2027, it would be like very early Q1. Um, that’s kind of the timeline we’re looking at, but obviously we’ll keep you up to date and keep you informed, transparency and with clarity. Um, but clarity as we get official alignment on next steps, because we don’t want to misspeak. We don’t want to over promise and under deliver.”
The pilot moved money between stores, and the established ones lost: “more heavily impacted, which was expected, but maybe not to the extent it was.” Texas is next. The country waits until “very early Q1” of 2027 at the soonest. And the promise of “transparency and with clarity” comes with its condition in the next clause, “clarity as we get official alignment on next steps.” That is the company’s definition of transparency, in the marketing lead’s voice. The 1% is not on that schedule.
Her list of the year: “national campaigns like the Mock Clocks,” “stronger national social media accounts, working with Champion City Media,” a new website, “reputation and local search with the SOCi platform.” And the year’s public relations, in her words: “some good, some bad, over the last year, but we’ve built a strong foundation there of positivity.” The bad half is on this site. Media placement is about two-thirds of the fund every year. The same meeting’s franchise-development lead described switching off the company’s Facebook advertising over the critics. Where the placements went instead is a line in a statement no one audits.
The fair reading, and its limit. Brand funds in most franchise systems run this way. Franchisor discretion, unaudited statements, exempt company stores, vendor allowances, and technology among the fund’s purposes are common, and all of it is disclosed here. “Build up the money” can mean saving for television, and running digital advertising “at scale” in the meantime is ordinary marketing talk. Slowing a pilot that hurt stores is the responsible call. The repeated sentence and the repeated $92,405 may be a drafting error, and nothing here alleges misuse of a dollar. The narrow points are the filings’ own. The fund has never reported a reserve. The 2026 filing describes it with last year’s sentence and figure, under a table they contradict. The stores pay now for marketing sized on stores that do not exist. And the vendors the stores must use are approved partly on what they pay into the fund the stores also pay into.
Sources. BAM’s Q3 franchise town hall, primary source: the marketing lead’s presentation and her two answers quoted above, with the submitted question as read. BAM’s 2023, 2025 and 2026 Franchise Disclosure Documents: Item 11 (“Advertising Fund and Advisory Council,” with the “Summary of Brand Fund (formerly, the National Marketing Fund) Contributions and Expenses” for fiscal 2022, 2024 and 2025), Item 6 (fee table), Item 8 (vendor approval criteria), and the 2026 state cover page risk factors, quoted verbatim; the disclosure record. Context at the links: the survey, the structured system, the transparency answer, the takeovers, the board, required purchases, the causality answer, the PR deck, and the ad pull.
The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; every official named is presumed to have acted lawfully. Sources are linked so readers can check the record. · Home · Map · The law · Bodycam