Meet the Chichester LEGO® business that built an iconic celebration at Crawley Town Football Club - and they have a special offer for Reds fans

The striker got to do his now iconic horse celebration 25 times - including once at Wembley - and also helped raise more than £1,000 for charity.

And the company behind it all is celebrating its two-year anniversary on August 25 - and they can’t wait to come up with a new celebration for one of this season’s stars.

Brick Borrow came on board as sponsors and partners of Crawley Town at the start of the 2023/24 season with co-founder Tom Zanelli saying: “This collaboration stands as a monumental achievement for Brick Borrow, harmoniously aligning with our vision to ignite creativity and imagination across all age groups.”

And they certainly did that with the Orsi celebration.

But who and what are Brick Borrow?

Well Tom is based in Chichester and partner and life long friend Cameron Mitchell is based in Edinburgh. The pair went to school together in Scotland.

Cameron worked in pharmaceuticals and Tom worked in football content. But it was Tom who was the instigator behind the idea of Brick Borrow - a sustainable monthly subscription service to borrow LEGO at affordable prices.

Tom, 34, told us: “I wanted to find an affordable way of building LEGO® with my son. We would buy on Facebook marketplace, and then I was rebuilding it and then trying to sell it, so we could get another set. And that's how we kind of tried to have a circular economy with it. But once you have built it, and we have the same with a lot of our customers now, what do you do with it?

“People haven't got the space to display or kids might not want to play with it when it's actually built. So this was something that I wanted to explore, I didn't think it would get to the level it has go to. I started it just on the bedroom floor and now we've got a big warehouse in Chichester and our logo on Crawley’s shirts. We have launched in Spain, Portugal and about to launch in Italy and have had more than 30,000 orders in two years. It’s kind of gone mad.”

And Cameron, 33, added: “I came aboard with Tom during Christmas time 2022. I was just speaking to Tom just catching up and he said how busy he was and I was like, ‘right well, if there's anything I can do it help’. Obviously he's down South and I'm up here. But I ended up shipping from my house, Tom shipping from his and we're both kind of just split it, IT made logistics a bit awkward. But we got through it and it kind of just grew from there.

“And like Tom says, we didn't really know where it was going to go. We kind of saw it as maybe like something we do on the side, we didn't think that we would be going full time so quick and grow as fast as it has.”

And a year in they teamed up with Crawley Town and it was a speculative email that got the ball rolling with the relationship.

Tom said: “I was on a website at 2am, looking as something called Sponsorship Seeker and basically trying to look at local teams and then I saw Crawley Town. I thought they must be out of our budget but they came back to me with an email the next morning with pictures of the logo on the kit. That sold it to us, it looked really, really cool with the red shirts. We knew that Crawley were underdogs and the job Scott [Lindsey] had done at the back end of that season, and, I don’t think we are underdogs in business but I thought it just kind of fitted us, the small club trying to punch above its weight and now we love it. We weren’t fans before but we are fans for life.”

Cameron added: “I was at my mum and dad’s last night and we were all around the TV watching them play Swindon!”

And when it came to the Orsi celebration idea, it was something Tom had been working on for while in his previous role.

“I have done the goal celebration makeover idea before,” said Tom. “I did it with Kyle Walker when he was at Tottenham. He never scored. We did it with a player called Keko at Malaga, he didn’t score after getting injured.

“Did it with Grant Holt. I used to work at Hibs and he did the ‘Incredible Holt’ and he did it on Sky against Hearts so that was amazing. We did it the next season with Simon Murray and he scored quite a few goals - we called that ‘Simon Says’.

“But we have never had anyone score 20 goals so the ‘Feed the Ors’ celebration really captured the imagination. Seeing other players and fans do it was just insane, especially at Wembley. I will never forget that moment.”

Cameron said it all started with a Zoom call where they were brainstorming puns. “The Orsi one was pretty easy, and it helped that he was so on board with it and he’s such a great guy.”

Tom added: “He even mentioned us in his departure statement before he thanked Scott Lindsey!”

And when they filmed the initial video with Orsi, Cameron was still working in pharmaceuticals. He said: “I came down, I was in full goalkeeper kit trying to save shots, but between filming I was jumping on to calls for my other job.”

But how long can the partnership last? “Personally, we are fans for life,” said Tom. “We’ll see how it works business wise. The dream would be to be on the front of the shirt at some point. But we will have to see how we grow but if Crawley keep getting promoted, we won’t be able to afford it.

“When they will be in the Premier League, they’ll be asking for a lot more money!”

And it’s clear they love the club. “The thing we have loved so much about the club is we feel part of it,” said Tom, while Cameron added: “Just going to games, in the hospitality area and the Redz Bar before the games, everyone is just so nice. There’s just a great feel about going to the Crawley games and we felt that from the start.”

Tom, and Cameron revealed they would be doing another celebration makeover, but are yet to unveil the player and the pun yet.

But one thing they have revealed is a special off for Crawley Town fans. Reds fans can get a 12-Month subscription to 'The Builder' plan for only £99 (Regular price £129). Use Code: CRAWLEY99

Visit https://www.brickborrow.com/ for more information.