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

Stain glass is an example for us. We’re very good at stain glass, we have maybe 20 products, but I worked out a deal with the vendor where I can bring in lower quantity on the stain glass, maybe 10 or 15 pieces, and they’ll let me put it on the Web. Furniture, furniture is the type of thing that sometimes you don’t need large quantities to work with the vendors. You could put additional furniture items on the Web with lower volume. You need that margin of 70 percent-plus, at least we do. If you can find vendors who still have that margin that will let you have lower quantity, because remember the Chinese want quantity. Some of this makes it difficult, except for the larger catalogers, and given our size we’re doing quite well with the vendors we have. I call them our ‘boutique’ vendors. Vendors who are big factories, but they’re not too big. If a factory’s 10,000 people, they’re not going to want to work with you in low quantity. But if you have a factory that’s somewhere between 200 and 1,000 people in it, you’re a big fish for them. And they’re willing to produce less quantity to make it work.