Ever wondered what it takes to become an LEGO Certified Professional (LCP)? Luke Reveruzzi shares his story

I have asked some LCPs to share their story about why and how they became a LEGO Certified Professional. Luke Reveruzzi who has been an LCP for almost 2 years agreed to share his history. If you want to know more about Luke please visit this site here. 

Back to Luke's story......

BEFORE LEGO

Some may see my LEGO journey as unconventional, but that would deem there was a conventional path to start with. Below is my journey from Designer to LEGO Certified Professional. How circumstance, failures and hard work has got me to the start of my LCP journey, and how I intend to continue it.

There is no Beginning to this story, but a series of interactions and a background that helps to paint a picture to my coming an LCP. It doesn’t start at 4 or 5 years of age, I wasn’t fortunate enough to have LEGO in my home and grow up playing with bricks. However, I did grow up creating with anything I could get my hands on, building and constructing.

Skipping many many years on, through resitting school years, digging holes as a labourer, serious injuries that took a sports career off the table, travelling the world, and many hard-learnt mistakes I found myself finishing University as an Industrial Product Designer.

In fact, my first interaction with LEGO came in Uni, where a product designer whom had graduated the same course I was studying, was a designer at the LEGO Group in Billund. His story, and his experience of developing new products put it firmly in my head, that I was doing the thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and that one day I wanted to work for the LEGO Group. SPOILER: I work with the LEGO Group, although, it would be a long time after this that it would eventually materialise!

LETS GO LEGO

Directly after finishing University, I jumped into starting my very own Product Design Consultancy. This grew to a relatively successful Creative consultancy developing products, experiences and campaigns for amazing clients, we also developed in house products/technologies/experiences that those clients didn’t believe possible. One of those experiences was called Shadow Runner.

Shadow Runner is an Augmented Reality experience where a visitor runs a race over a 15-20m track, and they are competing against their favourite athlete. It could be used for Football, Rugby and Athletics and first featured at the London 2012 Olympics with Mizuno, where Intel discovered the product and introduced it to The LEGO Group.

A LEGO director flew in to the UK to meet with us and discuss how we can adapt the technology so that children can race against a LEGO Minifigure. The LEGO version of Shadow Runner featured for the first time at the 2013 LEGO World Event in Copenhagen. Yay, I got to work with LEGO and it didn’t disappoint. Making it more interesting, I got to be involved with the LEGO World Event in Copenhagen which gave me a further understanding of the world of LEGO outside head office…the fans community!

Over the next few years we toured the Shadow Runner experience to other LEGO events, but furthermore, I was privileged to work with such a diverse scope of projects with a wide variety of teams, departments and partners, that gave me my education into the LEGO Group. From product design teams, LEGO House and Merlin.

At the same time my agency, worked with many large and small brands, developed over 43 product/experiences and won awards from SXSW Accelerator to best patent in the world WIPO award.

STACKING GOOD FUN

Having experienced so much with LEGO, its partners and the community, I felt my understanding was quite comprehensive and believed in what the product offers in a child’s development, learning and entertainment. Living in an emerging market, and the launch of LEGOLAND Dubai coming up, I felt the heart of LEGO was being missed. This is difficult in a consumer led market that needed an education to a long history.

I decided to create a LEGO Fans event called STACK. This was delivered as an entertainment event to bring families, and then provide an insight into the other things the LEGO Brick and the brand offered. We assembled AFOLs from all over the world, created different experience zones, localised content, and demonstrated the versatility.

Although it was well received by the local market, visitors and fans, it wasn’t a commercial success. With that came many difficulties and a very hard period of time for the business and me personally. STACK took to the road and tried its luck in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, that received a variety of failures and successes.

During the last couple years, as a side project I started to build as an outlet. Very much part of my nature and my journey, I learnt on the job (the hard way), so then began to take on commissions to build with LEGO bricks. In doing so I broke Guinness World Records worked with many brands, including the LEGO group themselves.

THE LCP DOOR

I’m not sure there is a step by step guide to becoming an LCP, all I can provide is my story and journey above that got me to the door. Getting through the door was a combination of timing as much as hard work, and of course a bit of luck. I, like a lot of LEGO enthusiasts had enquired about the process of becoming an LCP, but the program was closed and not open for any new members.

Then one day I was informed that it had been opened, and the local LEGO office that I had worked closely with for years had invited me to apply. This was down to their need, our long-standing relationship, my ongoing experiences of building with LEGO bricks for the market and a flourishing new market.

The door was open, and I was not going to miss an opportunity to be a member of such a unique exclusive team of individuals with such a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences, that were bound by 1 common thread, using LEGO bricks to express their creativity.

Although I may lack the volume of sets, or MOCs, a recognisable profile, a childhood of playing with LEGO, a LUG membership as many many others, this doesn’t diminish my passion for the brand or my desire to build with LEGO bricks. I came to love the brand a very different way, and maybe more akin to that of employees of the LEGO group, that found their inner AFOL on the job. But it doesn’t measure any different to other enthusiasts that collect, or build trains, or prefer to build small mocs, fans that use photography, Minifigure collector/traders…and the list goes on! LEGO the company, the brand or the toy unites people on so many different levels from a diverse background. Whether its my daughters love for LEGO at only 4 or the builder/collectors of 20 years, the artists, the fans that have been connecting those tiny little plastic bricks since 1954. And this is why I love what I do, and understand as an LCP I honour more than just myself.

Luckily for me, the team in Billund along with the support of the Local office, could see my passion, capability as a builder and my vision aligned with their values. They had identified the need in a young region that had no prior LCP, for the services of model building, and I had a proven track record of working with the Brand over 8 years. I was welcomed into to the LCP program early in 2020, and could not be prouder.

In a roundabout way, I have come close to what I set out to do….to one day work for the LEGO group! But this is just the beginning. My past business journey informs me that mistakes will come, that hard work is needed to make a company work, especially one as unique as building with LEGO bricks, but I am comfortable in the fact I know I can make it succeed.

I maybe late to being a traditional LEGO enthusiast, but my name is Luke, I am a LEGO Certified Professional and I use LEGO bricks as my medium of choice.