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

CS: What have been the keys to success at Design Toscano?

MS: There’s another thing, not just search, affiliates and organic search. It’s sort of come 360 degrees. During the 90’s and early 2000’s there was a mad dash to Asia. You needed size, the Chinese don’t like to buy one or two products, you go to buy some quantity. With the Web now you have some presence, you could go back to drop shippers. You could get the components that you’re not deep enough in and put them on the Web and still make money because it’s such an important part of the business. For example, we could buy bronzes from Thailand, but you need a certain amount of quantity. So what I’m looking for is a drop shipper who is in the bronze business, a B-to-B company that I could put onto the Web and drop-ship. It’s almost going back to the roots of adding things to the Web site that aren’t in the catalog, that you don’t have to take a big position in and risk, so people find it. Books, I’d like to find a vendor. If you’re looking for books on Greek and Roman, if you’re looking for books on dragons, fairies, historical furniture, history of statues and art, that would be a nice segment. Carpets, for what it’s worth, Home Décor and Touch of Class sort of own carpets and rugs for catalog. And it’s very difficult to offer carpets, because you know people are going to go to them because they’re such a high mass. But you can’t say that if you have a good drop shipper you can’t add carpets and rugs to the Web site, because you don’t have that economic cost and risk that’s in the catalog. If you can find vendors or products that you can add that reduces your risk and makes the Web site even broader.