A Chat With February’s Profile, Mike Stopka, President/Owner of Design Toscano

Catalog Success: How did you break into the catalog business?

Mike Stopka: It’s kind of a romantic story. Now we’re going back almost 20 years. Professionally I was a consultant and I traveled all over the United States in the 80’s, when I was in my 20’s and early 30’s — working in financial institutions, doing feasibility studies. Very strong on the spread-sheet skills. With that said, with all that travel I had free tickets, so we used to go to Europe every year. This is when the dollar was strong. It was like cheaper than going to vacation in Wisconsin for an Illinois person. We got the free tickets, we took the family out since my son was a infant and then the rest of the kids. And we’d go out to Europe every year. We really enjoyed the European experience — going through castles, museums and other monuments. The whole European experience. I told my wife [Marilyn Stopka, co-owner of Design Toscano], ‘There’s a market to market European exotic products to the American public.’ You just stashed that away.