The coach is Julie Kuni, BAM’s franchise business coach for the entire West Coast, and Tucson is one of her region’s stores. She is telling the other owners in that region that BAM did it: that the company took the lease, shut the store, and ordered the owner to clear out and haul away his own shelves. That is the franchisor, through its own agent, admitting it reached into a store and destroyed it. The owner says the reverse. In public, BAM says nothing at all.
CONFIRMEDJulie Kuni is BAM’s franchise business coach for the West Coast region, which covers California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona, and Tucson is one of the stores in itCONFIRMEDKuni is telling owners in her region that BAM “bought out the lease, closed them down,” and made the Tucson owner vacate and take his product and fixtures. Confirmed as to the statement having been made, not as to its truthCORROBORATEDthe owner’s own account is the reverse: he says he ended the franchise himself, by letter, on the public Echo Base video. Corroborated by that video, not yet independently confirmed. BAM has said nothing official about how the store closed
“That was us.”
A franchise business coach is not the owner’s peer. She is BAM’s employee, assigned to a region, sent to speak for headquarters. So when she tells an owner what BAM did to another store, it is not a rumor passing between shopkeepers. It is the company, in its own voice.
Here is what she is telling the owners in her region about Reckless Bricks.
“As far as Reckless Bricks being closed, yes! That was us. We bought out the lease, closed them down, and asked them to immediately vacate the building, and to take all of their product, fixtures, everything with them.”
It is a confession, and a threat.
A confession, because it is BAM saying BAM did it. Not the owner quitting. Not the owner abandoning the store. BAM took the lease. BAM closed the store. BAM ordered the man out and told him to carry his own shelves with him. The company reached into a store it wanted gone and shut it, and its coach says so in three words: that was us.
A threat, because of who she is saying it to. She is not confiding in a reporter. She is telling the other owners in her region, the ones still paying BAM every month, what the company is willing to do to a store. The message underneath “that was us” is “and it could be you.”
The man who ran the Tucson store already told the story in public, and he told it the other way. On opening night he said on Coach of Echo Base Network that he ended the franchise himself, by letter, before he reopened under his own name. He left. No one bought him out. No one ordered him to vacate. He closed the Bricks & Minifigs and opened his own store in the same room.
Both cannot be true. Either BAM seized the lease and threw him out, as its coach tells the region, or he quit and walked, as he told a camera the night it happened.
And the part where the store is stripped bare does not match what anyone can see. In the last public look, a video on September 17, the shelves were full, the cases stocked, the lights on. The cleared-out store the coach describes is not the one in that video.
To franchisees, BAM says it did this. In public, it has said one sentence about the store: its marketing director’s line on September 12 that “Corporate is taking swift, decisive, and appropriate action.” It never said what the action was. It has filed nothing new, answered nothing here, issued no statement. The only place BAM will describe what it did in Tucson is the one place its owners cannot hold it to: a coach, on the phone, one owner at a time.
That is the whole of it. If BAM ever argues that this owner abandoned his store, its own franchise business coach has already told the field the opposite: that BAM took the lease and shut him down. The company is telling two stories, and it is only willing to sign its name to the one that says nothing.
The fair counterpoint. What is confirmed is that BAM’s West Coast coach is giving franchisees this account of the closure. That the statement was made is not in doubt. Whether BAM in fact did what she describes is the separate question, and the owner answers it the other way. His account is his own and is untested in court. BAM has not answered, and its right of reply is open, as is the coach’s. Everyone named is presumed to have acted lawfully, and the disputes at the center of the wider case remain unproven allegations.
Later: a locksmith changed the locks on the Tucson store on Wednesday afternoon, two days after the landlord told the owner it was “between her legal team and BAM corporate now”, reported September 23.
Sources. This site’s confirmation of BAM’s West Coast franchise support region and of the coach over it. The coach’s account of the closure, as it reached this site, quoted in full above; this site has confirmed the statement was made. The owner’s public account: Coach of Echo Base Network, September 13, 2026. The store on September 17, still stocked: the video piece. BAM’s only public statement to its franchisees about the store: its marketing director’s message, September 12. Earlier: the opening and the locator. This site’s right of reply is open to everyone named here.