Meet the unusual, whimsical at Elk Grove's Design Toscano

Gnomes share space with Bigfoot. Lifelike rabbits and black panthers encounter dragons, zombies and gargoyles. Elsewhere, there are ornate thrones, artwork and an Egyptian sarcophagus.

Such unlikely pairings aren't unusual at one of the most eclectic, whimsical and sometimes kitschy companies on earth. Elk Grove Village-based Design Toscano offers a mix of statuary as well as replicas of historic furniture and garden fountains to both consumers and major corporations.

Some of their statues have been sold at Menard's. Others can be seen at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. But many of their products were found in the SkyMall catalog tucked, until recently, into the seat pockets of airplanes.

Phoenix-based SkyMall Inc. became one of Design Toscano's most important clients and biggest public relations boosts around the world. That ended when SkyMall filed bankruptcy earlier this year.

In response, Design Toscano co-owner and President Michael J. Stopka, 58, and his wife/partner Marilyn, 54, said they ramped up their global markets and expanded their relationship with Amazon.com.

“It was not the most profitable, but it was the exposure,” Mike Stopka said of SkyMall. “About 1.7 million people would see our brand on all the airlines. It was like a PR device. If you'd go to a cocktail party, and mention SkyMall and the yeti, suddenly they would know what you're talking about.”

SkyMall owed Design Toscano about $300,000. So the Stopkas avoided standing in line at bankruptcy court and accepted an offer from C&A Marketing Inc. of Ridgefield Park, N.J., which buys such receivables. While Design Toscano received only about 30 cents on the dollar, at least the Stopkas received cash up front.

Despite the hit from SkyMall, Design Toscano continues to capture imaginations worldwide. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos liked Design Toscano's products so much that he ordered a 6-foot Bigfoot statue, known as the garden yeti, to grace his headquarters' lobby in Seattle. TV personalities, such as Jimmy Fallon, have talked about the unusual gift items featured in SkyMall and referred to Design Toscano's products on the air. And many gardeners have scooped up gnomes, animal replicas and statuary to grace their flower beds.

The company offers more than 6,000 products ranging from $6.95 holiday ornaments to $12,000 12-foot dinosaurs. And all of it is at its Elk Grove Village facility or a warehouse in Bensenville, where pallets are marked and ready to be shipped to Poland, Germany and other countries. The company's global reach is expected to expand this year to Britain and elsewhere.

Despite the international flavor, Arlington Heights was the birthplace of their venture. In the basement of their former home.

The beginning

Mike Stopka met Marilyn when she attended Resurrection High School on Chicago's Northwest Side. Stopka's father owned Norwood Foods grocery store at the time.

“She came into the grocery store with her friends,” Mike said.

They later married and started raising three children. During his 20s, he worked as a consultant for General Instruments and traveled a great deal, he said.

“I helped to develop business systems, and I got a lot of business exposure at a young age,” he said.

In 1982 on a trip to Europe, he was intrigued by the castles, monasteries, historical monuments and scenery. He wanted to bring the same opulence and majesty to the United States.

So Mike and Marilyn borrowed about $6,000 from an aunt, teamed up with Chicago-based Orlandi Statuary and began their business in the basement of their Arlington Heights home.

While they had many components of a growing business, they still needed good customer service. That's when Mike walked into an art gallery in downtown Arlington Heights and asked the owner to help process their customer orders.

By 1993, sales hit $2.6 million. Marilyn, who had worked as a law firm paralegal, and Mike eventually quit their day jobs to focus solely on developing Design Toscano.

By 1998, Design Toscano started selling its products via SkyMall. The couple opened a retail store in Arlington Heights and later franchised stores on Michigan Avenue and Clybourn Avenue in Chicago, in Hinsdale and in Milwaukee.

They did a catalog that featured gargoyle statues, which became top sellers.

To mix up their product line and reach a wider audience, they added European furniture and attended trade shows worldwide.

Sales reached $20 million. But profit was minimal and they owed money to Orlandi. Stopka began switching to Asian vendors to increase their profit margin.

“It allowed me to capitalize the business and I could finally pay Orlandi,” Stopka said.

Design Toscano used vendors from China, the Philippines, Indonesia and India, but Stopka insisted the products be exclusive, so he could have more control over prices.

Great Recession

Circulation of the Design Toscano catalog grew to about 16 million copies and Stopka began talking to venture capitalists to fund further growth. While a deal fell through, he did receive some funding from a bank.

Then the Great Recession hit, Design Toscano lost money and was forced to restructure. It cut its workforce from 110 to 70. The retail stores closed.

“It's a lot easier to grow and manage a company than it is to downsize,” Stopka said. “It's a lot harder to take the bone out.”

Mike Stahelin has known Mike Stopka for about 12 years and is amazed at his constant energy, creativity and how he thrives in an environment of constant change.

“He is able to design, manufacture and market thousands of products along numerous product lines,” said Stahelin, president of Glen Ellyn-based Stahelin Properties. “Through the last twelve years we have experienced some of the best and worst economic conditions, and I am so impressed how Mike is constantly reinventing his product line to match the economic conditions.”

To counter the downturn, Design Toscano embraced the Web and sold online, while catalog circulation shrank to about 5 million. The company opened more channels to sell its products, including relationships with big-box stores such as Menard's and various garden centers nationwide.

The company and its products were featured on QVC in April and May. And Design Toscano has a deal with the Discovery Channel's Shark Week promotion in July to sell its shark statues and related artwork.

The Stopkas continue to travel through Europe for product ideas. They teamed up on many of those trips with Dennis V. O'Donnell, owner of Design, Outsource & Development Services in Erdenheim, Pennsylvania. O'Donnell met the Stopkas in 1998.

“Design Toscano was an early sales target when I started up my marketing agency that year, because of a near-perfect intersection of Toscano's design sensibility and my suppliers' appetites for product development,” O'Donnell said. “This was especially true for makers of indoor and outdoor statuary who could faithfully reproduce classical statues and also sculpt original designs with a Toscano twist.”

The Stopkas, now married 35 years, have raised three children in Arlington Heights and later Barrington. They continue to work on new products to help freshen the company and endear it to new customers, including those on Amazon.

Staying 'Toscano-fied'

Their relationship with Amazon started about five years ago and has been expanding with Amazon Prime, which offers more perks for members. Design Toscano pays a fee to Amazon and in return it gets better placement in searches, promotions and exposure to new markets, including the United Kingdom and Germany. The company aims to expand next to Italy, France and Spain, Stopka said.

Amazon and new avenues around Europe likely will help sales. Design Toscano's sales in 2014 were about $24 million, and Stopka expects them to be about $26 million in 2015.

“It's not like our heyday before the recession, but we're seeing slower growth ... and there is a lot of low-hanging fruit,” he said.

One factor in the company's favor is its exclusive designs and products, said Steven C. Pseno of Inverness, Design Toscano's vice president/creative and chief merchant. He designs many products to make sure they are “Toscano-fied,” he said.

“We look at the trends and what people like,” Pseno said.

Pseno has helped the company capitalize on popular items including gargoyles, dragons, zombies and gnomes. He took great care in designing the garden yeti, one of the company's biggest sellers.

“When I did the yeti, they said, 'Who is going to buy that monkey?' But we were ahead of the curve,” Pseno said.

Even an angelic statue of a little girl facing heaven and holding up her hands became more than a good seller. And it was modeled after his daughter, Sophia, he said.

“When she was born, the doctors didn't think she would make it,” Pseno said. “I remember holding her in just one hand, she was so small.”

But Sophia is now 8 years old. And garden yetis have provided a good living.

“We follow our life here, and it's been a very good life,” Pseno said.