A Chat with June’s Profile, Justus Bauschinger, president/owner of Lilliput Motor Co. & Deutsche Optik
CS: How many employees are there between the two books?
JB: We’ve got 14 people, full time.
CS: How did you get your start in the catalog business?
JB: I started out as a manufacturer — I was in the sewing trades for many years. My hobby, personally besides mountaineering and sailing so on, was toys. My sister at the time lived in Germany and had a toy store in Munich with a partner that was very, very special. And I used to go over there and always go-gah through it and I always wanted to have my own. I just never got there because the demands of the other business were such that by the end of the day I was exhausted.
So one day I decided that I didn’t like that other business any more because the sewing trades had all gone offshore. I decided I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to sit in some office in San Francisco and have my stuff made in China, because I liked the involvement of designing it and making the patterns and then producing it. So I got out of that business and got serious about the toy business. Spent a few years researching it and put together some money and opened a store that failed in San Francisco, which was supposed to be the flagship of a multistore rollout and mail order venture. That lasted three years and went tips up for a lot of money.
There I was bankrupt and the only idea I had at the time was, well, there are these little Schuco cars and a lot of residents. So as I said, a two-column, six-inch coupon ad in the New York Times, Western edition put it on the map.
