How Passion Ignited a Toy Empire: Insights from Paul Meck, Entrepreneur since Age 15

EP056_09-19-24_Paul Meck

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Toy Business Unboxed, your gateway to the secrets of the toy industry. Here, Jason Hsieh, a toy entrepreneur and expert in the field. “Every product we develop is really inspired by some of the real life experience that we have with our son.” “60 percent of all toys last year were sold on Amazon.”

“Be passionate about it. Because it’s a road. It’s a journey.” “Like when you have an idea that you think is gonna somewhat change the world, make things better, I’d say go for it.“

Jason Hsieh: Hello, welcome to another episode, Toy Business Unboxed. Today we have exciting guest, Paul, the owner, and the CEO of Burning Rubber Toy Company. Paul’s journey in the toy industry started early at just age 15, and when he created the hot wheel business that took off, that lead him to doing more and more of [00:01:00] specialized in the die-cast market and today we’re gonna be talking about how he was able to build this business from the ground up. And currently is managing inventory over a hundred thousand card if I got a number correctly. And is also an industry expert known for his consulting work. So thank you so much for joining us on today’s podcast, Paul.

Paul Meck: Thank you for having me.

Jason Hsieh: Actually you are the first guest that specialize in die-cast on my show.

Paul Meck: Based on what’s behind me, you would think that I do something different, but this is just my personal collection on the walls. But that cast cars are a big business. We have such a huge passion for the car industry and we’re the resident experts.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Tell me a little bit more. So how do you got into this business at just age 15? That’s it was high. Schooler doesn’t really think about business yet

Paul Meck: no I’ve been given a great gift in life. I think God gave me a great gift of mind for business. And I wanted to find something I was truly passionate about. And at that point in time, we were selling baseball cards at car shows [00:02:00] back in the nineties. Baseball cards were huge. You could literally set up on any corner and it’d be big. I like the idea of order operation. The cars had a number system so I could build sets. And I decided, you know what, why are we doing baseball cards at car shows?

So I started walking around at car shows, realizing that this is a beautiful art form. Something about vehicles. All the chrome, all the design. I fell in love with it. And then I started off with Hot Wheels because that was the most accessible product that you could find in the store.

Jason Hsieh: I see. Back then when you started, what kind of hot wheel car were you selling initially when you first started?

Paul Meck: 95 was the make or break year for Hot Wheels. What they did is they created subsets. So there’d be four car series. They started this thing called First editions. And all these guys that were in the baseball cards, it was waning out at that point and people started realizing that, oh, if there’s gonna be sets, I like collecting sets. That’s what I’m used to with baseball cards. Let’s try it with cars. We started just putting things in [00:03:00] order by the series and people would come up and say, I’m missing number three, I’m missing number two. And it just took off.

Jason Hsieh: I’m from Wilkes, Pennsylvania, which is near Philadelphia. There was a lot of older people that were into the industry and they were on their tail end of selling. And what I did was I went in and I just bought everybody’s slack.

I love that you buy everyone out. Okay.

Paul Meck: I wanna be the biggest. I wanna be the best. That’s always the way I go about business. And I saw these people that just weren’t putting enough effort into what their customers were looking for. They weren’t listening well to their customer base. And I said, I could do this better. And I ended up finding people that loved cars so much that they ended up pretty much funding my life. Which was incredible.

Jason Hsieh: That’s some crazy story. And when you first started, were you always selling it in person?

Paul Meck: Yes at that point in time, internet was just, it was just smaller, it was dial up internet. If you could remember that.

Jason Hsieh: Oh yeah,

Paul Meck: So things were just different. Hot Wheels was just starting to make message boards to sell things on a OL [00:04:00] chat, things like that. So I slowly got into that, probably within three years of opening, but it was almost all in person at that point.

Jason Hsieh: I see. And I think you have built up pretty impressive business on eBay as well, can we also talk a little bit about that, how you started on eBay?

Paul Meck: It’s definitely a sore point these days, but which we’ll get into here in a minute. But yeah I was buying so many people’s collections. I was buying so many people’s businesses. One thing I joke about constantly is 95% of the people I meet in business shouldn’t be in business. But it is business I find to be one of the most difficult things on the planet, and I think most people can’t comprehend it. most people are passionate, they love what they sell, but they don’t understand the whole grand scheme of things.

And that’s where I’m different. I’m a businessman first, and then passion is next. So yeah, it’s it’s just something that that is extremely difficult to get into.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, and this is something we chatted a little bit before the interview started. It is you are trading nine to five to a five night job.

Paul Meck: Yeah. As my wife could tell you there’s not really [00:05:00] a minute that I don’t talk about business, which is, could be rough for some people, that’s for sure.

Jason Hsieh: Yes. It’s definitely a hard to separate the personal and the business aspect. That’s something I struggle myself. it’s hard to distinct because like business I feel like just part of me now.

Paul Meck: Absolutely. Yeah.You do need to find a good group of people that to unleash what you have inside of you. Because with business, if you hold things back, it just builts up. You need to talk about it. It’s like you almost need a business support group at some point in time. So what you’re doing is awesome and I, appreciate it ’cause it gets out what I need to get out.

Jason Hsieh: For sure. That’s actually one of the reasons why I started the podcast is to meet other awesome entrepreneurs like yourself and just chat about business.

And I want to go into eBay a little bit further because eBay has been such an important part of your entrepreneurial journey as well. Of course that’s up and down, and I want to also dive into.

So when you first started was the type of business model that you have. How many cars do you have in your eBay store?

Paul Meck: So one of the things I, when I started [00:06:00] eBay was I just did a lot of research, which I never just yeah. Just dive into anything. I really do sit back and do the research. I found a guy on there that was selling Hot Wheels loose or selling other brand names loose, like Johnny Lightning. And I loved his photography. One of the main reasons I never sold online was, I wanted a way to represent myself, but I have such a big personality. I was like, how could I do this online? ’cause nobody’s gonna see me, nobody’s gonna know me. So what I discovered was photography was the key to getting people interested in my product. So I found some people that were selling things loose, and I said, you know what? We’ve got all these multi-packs that don’t sell in person. We’ve got a lot of things that we have an abundance of because we bought people’s businesses out and so I said, okay, everything that’s extra, that’s not gonna take to a toy show or a car show, let’s put it online. And the photography we found thank God my buddy, he gave me the best advice ever. Amazing camera, amazing light box. He suggested and really took over. If you saw our pictures early on [00:07:00] eBay, there was nothing else like it. We stood out and it was incredible.

And that’s how we got started with that. When it first started, I’d say we probably built it up to about 2000 cars. At our height, there was about over 7,000 SKUs. Yeah. It’s a lot. It was a lot.

Jason Hsieh: That’s a lot. Managing a 7,000 SKUs online store is not a small feed.

Paul Meck: No. You I am different. Let’s put it that way. Everything’s in order by make model year, which is something that people don’t do. I sat back and really listened to my customer base and everybody had it in order by, like I talked about with the Hot Wheels. They had it in order by sets. As I saw, as time went on, people weren’t making sets anymore ’cause there was too many. Like baseball cards, there’s too many bums.

So you stop collecting the bums and you just only collect the stars. What I discovered was the people that I love to be around the most are people that truly love car culture. So everything was in order by make model year,

Jason Hsieh: make model, year. Yeah and so that aligned.

Paul Meck: Exactly. So then, when you went to my eBay store and had everything [00:08:00] organized so easily, you were able to buy not just one car, but you’d buy everything that you needed because I made it so simple for you to shout. That was a big deal. It was a big difference.

Jason Hsieh: And the other thing I think that’s very unique. Our team did some research about your business model back then when doing your peak, I believe you have almost a hundred thousand.

Paul Meck: We had 150,000 cars at one point.

Jason Hsieh: How big is your inventory team?

Paul Meck: It was me and my wife for the most part. And we had one other person. It just, I found an awesome wife that really loved what we did. her father took her to car shows growing up. Which was great.She knew real cars better than I knew real cars. I learned real cars through die-cast. And then she learned die-cast through real cars. So the combination of the two,

Jason Hsieh: what is your tip to manage such a massive amount of inventory was all like 6,000 SKU that’s just mind boggling.

Paul Meck: I always said if I had to just worry about SKUs, I would quit this business. It doesn’t interest me at all. I don’t like the numbers of it. I love the art form of it all. So I said having everything in order by make model [00:09:00] year. So the boxes in the warehouse are exactly the same way the toy truck is set up is the same way the eBay store is set up. So I try to make it idiot proof. So if we do hire somebody, it has the same exact flow in every direction, no matter if we’re in person or online.

Jason Hsieh: I see. And talking about the truck, I have to show the case, the truck, because you have an awesome truck. So for the listener that’s listening that would like to see the awesome truck that Paul have, please also watch it on our YouTube channel. Can we talk about how big this truck is first of all?

Paul Meck: It’s 28 feet long. Each one of those sections is called a bay, so it’s an eight bay. And what it was a water truck out of Vegas. My mind was I need to give the people the best experience, have the biggest selection, and have it to be easy to set up at an event.

And I would literally sit out and watch vehicles go by. I was at a gas station one time and there was a guy that brought up a water truck and I started asking him questions and he probably thought I was nuts. But what young adults says, Hey what’s, tell me about your truck? [00:10:00] It’s just not, it’s not something you do with a water truck. You know what I mean? And I discovered that I think this is the most efficient way to carry the most products and to be the most organized. And then I was lucky enough to find a guy in Vegas that was a good friend of mine that has actually a Hot Wheels tattoo on his leg.

It was amazing. So him and his father they’re into construction. They were building offices in Vegas during the big boom. And he said, I wanna build out this truck with you, and the three of us got together in our spare time and we kept on building it up. A lot of my concepts are in this. And what’s really cool about this truck that nobody knows about, for the most part, there’s actually a room in the center of it.

Jason Hsieh: That’s a room in the center of it. Exactly. What the heck?

Paul Meck: Yeah, so it’s on both sides of the truck. So one side of the truck is Ford, Mopar, and four, and the other side is gm. And then there’s a door that opens in the first bay there, and you go inside and there’s actually bunk beds in the back. There’s room for storage. I’m tell you what’s amazing to me is. I thank God I’ve been given a great mind.

Jason Hsieh: Is this also a rv?

Paul Meck: Yeah. It really is. It has everything other than a [00:11:00] bathroom and a shower. If I could figure that out, I’d be really set.

Jason Hsieh: That’s incredible. I didn’t know that’s a bed behind this thing.

Paul Meck: Yeah, it’s the world’s only toy truck. There’s nothing else like it. To people have tried to replicate us on a U-Haul truck, it’s just not the same thing. But it is really incredible and honestly, it’s so overwhelming to some people they don’t even realize it’s a truck. All they can see is the car sometimes. So that’s always funny when people walk away. It’s oh dude, that’s a truck. I didn’t even know if you could drive that. I’m like, we drive it all over, yep.

Jason Hsieh: You make it work. Yeah. How long does it take to renovate the truck for this specific purposes?

Paul Meck: Yeah. So it depends. So you mean building the truck out?

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Yeah. Modify the truck.

Paul Meck: So from idea in my head to building it out, it took six months. Fortunately it said, the guys that I worked with they had day jobs, so I had to work around their schedule. They’re the most awesome, passionate people. And unfortunately the father just passed away last month, which was hard for me because he, really, he was such a quality human being and he did so much. It’s almost like he took me in as a son to build this [00:12:00] project. I can never thank either one of them enough. They’re just such amazing people.

Jason Hsieh: I see. Yeah, sorry to hear that.

Paul Meck: Yeah. Thank you.

Jason Hsieh: This is an incredible truck. And I think this is also one of the main reasons for your success as well, because yeah, this is portable.

How many like cars can fit? On the display shelf, how many unit are we looking at?

Paul Meck: There’s over 4,000 hooks on there. And so the crazy thing about it. The way I built it is, and my hands were crippled for, I can’t even tell you how long they, it hurt so bad. But you know how you hang a light. I had to separate over 4,000 of those chain links and then re-put them together to build that. And it was difficult. That was probably the hardest part.

Jason Hsieh: But each time when you are about to close, do you just close it? Is there like a shutter? How does it work?

Paul Meck: Yeah, so like I said, thank God for the mind that I have, I’ve been able to figure out ways to, everything just fits perfectly in it. So there’s racks that go around the front of the cab of the truck, each one of those bays fits those racks perfectly. And then down at the bottom of the truck, if you look, there’s smaller racks. [00:13:00] Each one of those racks gets hung in each bay up top. So every, it’s literally like a set of Legos.

Jason Hsieh: Thank you for sharing us about the truck you built.

The other thing I want to talk about we mentioned about it earlier about eBay. When I first started eBay was a little bit bigger as part of my overall revenue. Right Now in 2024, I would say in my own toy business, eBay does less than 1%, maybe 0.5%, right? If not even that. Maybe not even that. But that is my experience selling toys that is a little bit different than yours. But I also want to ask,

what was your experience over the last decade that you have been selling on eBay?

Paul Meck: It was very small. Like I said, it was an afterthought to get rid of product. And then we got into it. We saw there was a need, we saw people buying multiple pieces. We saw the photography work and it was like, alright. And then eBay saw how we were growing and they really got behind us. They spent money on marketing us. We were the golden child in our category there for a bit. When the pandemic happened because of my high [00:14:00] inventory, most people did just in time inventory where I was the opposite. I had 150,000 cars sitting in inventory. So when the pandemic happened? It exploded. We were the only ones on the internet that had the inventory that we did, and we just, we took over. It was okay. Every single day we’d come here we were shipping just tons and tons of stuff. It was so much fun because all these people were sitting at home. They got the free money to spend and they came to us and they depended on us. We built amazing collections during that period of time.

So what happened after the pandemic was over with. The new CEO, which I have complete disdain for Jamie. There’s certain people in life that you feel like I’m a very big on supporting the human race, I’m very big on supporting the greater good, of course. And there’s certain people in life that are just elitist. They were, they make millions and millions of dollars a year, and they only wanna hang out with millionaires and billionaires. I don’t believe in that. I believe that as a human being, we can,

Jason Hsieh: I can think of someone with a orange hair that’s like that.

Paul Meck: Yeah, exactly right? So for me, I believe we can get [00:15:00] as much out of the common Joe as, someone that’s a millionaire billionaire. We have to listen to every story. ’cause every story is crucial in our story. Building that out, he decided after the pandemic you know what? Marketing these smaller ticket items, ’cause most of our items are 10 to 20 bucks. we don’t wanna do that anymore. So he started choosing key categories eBay motors, because it’s big ticket items. Handbags, the shoes, anything that was a hype item.

So he took what you, this is literally the worst thing you could ever do to a business is promote them, build them up, and then tear them down after you’re done. It tore all of us down. And so you’re seeing the same thing I’m seeing, and every single person I talk to is they all have one foot out the door because eBay has destroyed our business.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. It’s just, I feel like it’s not worth the time and effort to even be on the platform anymore compared to before.

Paul Meck: I can give you an example at this point in time, so in the die-cast category, it’s 13% of every dollar. It used to be just of the item value. Then they started saying, oh, we want it at the shipping value. [00:16:00] Then we want it of the taxes. Okay. Then they said, oh, that’s not enough. Now we want you to promote your items. So it started off, I did 1% promotion. I doubled my business. It went fine. 1%, who cares? It’s a throwaway number. Then I went 2%. It did even better. Hey fine. That’s cool I’m comfortable with that. Then they decide to start dictating to you what they want.

Jason Hsieh: Ah. Now they wanna make more money from you. That’s exactly right they want,

Paul Meck: guess what the starting promoting number is. 11% right now.

Jason Hsieh: 11. Okay. Now that means 1% to 11.

Paul Meck: Yeah. They want starting 24% of every penny you make, and that’s just, that’s unfair. No one should ever be forced of that. Now we’re seeing up in the 30% they want of every dollar. There is nothing left for the entrepreneur.

Jason Hsieh: So in your online journey, have you ever considered just switch to Amazon instead?

Paul Meck: I did Amazon for a while. I found it to be a race to the bottom. I’m a person that believes that sometimes you pay what you get for,

Jason Hsieh: but you have such a unique [00:17:00] item. I don’t think a lot of people will even have the same product as the one you have on Amazon.

Paul Meck: Yeah, we, I think what got me was the return anything policy and Amazon will pay it back. We started getting stuff back that wasn’t even ours. And the other big thing that they restricted us on, we had a Mattel account that we did really well with. We’re 15 minutes down the road from Mattel’s warehouse.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, wow. Okay.

Paul Meck: We, sometimes would be the first ones in the world to get the product. They would not let us list brand new product. So that’s our big advantage. So if you’re not gonna let us list,

Jason Hsieh: they have some brand gating they did. Nike or any other big not list a new condition. Yeah. That’s correct.

Paul Meck: that was a bummer because we had all these people that were depending on us for the newest stuff out. We had a huge following. And it was just like I started putting up things and say, you can’t list this. You can’t list this. There’s too many restrictions if you’re gonna restrict me from

Jason Hsieh: How about scale your own website using like Shopify or WooCommerce instead? How is that going?

Paul Meck: Yeah. So that’s it’s been the biggest kryp, my kryptonite of my entire life we’re, going on 10 [00:18:00] years, have never been able to find someone that could commit and do the job. But lately, so here’s the ironic twist of how bad Jamie Aon is at his job. Like I told you, his big category in eBay that he’s saying is where they’re putting the money is eBay motors. Guess what? The warehouse across the street, did millions and millions of dollars on eBay motors. Since Jamie’s taken over, they’re tanking their business. They’ve had a layoff. Yeah,

Jason Hsieh: what I saw that was a like category. He was trying to focus on

Paul Meck: yeah, exactly. So here we go. So tell me what, he doesn’t bring anything positive to the table, but what happened in that process was their website guy came over and we were able to do just some work. And he’s absolutely incredible. Every day I talk to him he’s the best.

We’ve got almost 30 years of customer base that love us and will follow us wherever, whatever we do. And I’m excited to bring them into our own website. They’ve been asking it for years. I also want to take iPads to the show as to where if we don’t have the product in person, you could purchase it right there [00:19:00] on the iPad.

Jason Hsieh: Are you building it on Shopify or WooCommerce?

Paul Meck: I wanted to do Shopify, but we did Big Commerce. There was some things that BigCommerce offered that Shopify didn’t and then it’s a tough one. Because now we’re, signing up with whatnot. I dunno if you’ve done anything with whatnot.

Jason Hsieh: I haven’t done anything with what not. What do they do?

Paul Meck: Oh, I’m super excited. They’ve been so wonderful. Their customer service is literally like nothing else. Oh really? It’s so attentive. I’m excited to deal with them. But they also have it’s live auctions, but they also have a store format and their store is gonna hook up with Shopify. I didn’t choose, unfortunately. There’s gonna be a learning curve. But I’m super excited to get working with the

Jason Hsieh: How do they charge? Do they charge a commission or is it a fee or

Paul Meck: Yeah, So it, it’s basically the processing fee and then it’s I think it’s 10% or so. But the great thing about whatnot is it’s quick auction. So you go on there, you show your item, it’s 15 second auctions, 32nd auctions. You can move more stuff in one day than you could do it on any other platform.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, interesting. Okay. I’ll have [00:20:00] my team look into that. I guess we have been so focusing on trying to optimize our Amazon present. We haven’t been looking into other marketplaces for while.

Paul Meck: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta differ. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket at this point in time, because as I’m discovering, I put all my eggs on the online basket to eBay. eBay and the last two years have burnt me hard, I’m looking forward to moving on.

Jason Hsieh: Thank you so for sharing that marketplace. I will definitely look into it as well.

The next question I have is, of course you have been doing this for over a decade, what are some of the biggest changes that you have been seeing in the toy industry based on your observation and how do you adapt to some of those changes?

Paul Meck: Yeah, so the quality of the products has definitely gone up in the die-cast market anyway. People always say, Hey I want you to see my old Red Line collection, which was the first Hot Wheels that ever came out. They were just clunks of metal, man. To me, they’re just not what I would want for myself. If you grew up in that decade, sure, I understand. You want your memories back. That completely makes sense. [00:21:00] The product now is laser perfect. It’ll never, we are in the best time period to collect if you want perfection.

There’s a company called Mini GT out there, and the amount of paint that they put on there and the logos, like if they did a race car every logo on a race car is on there. It’s absolutely incredible to do at the size of a Hot Wheels. So that has been great. On the negative part of it is, it’s the door is closed. If you want to talk to a company, good luck finding an email. Good luck finding customer service. Good luck being able to talk to the people that, that you need to talk to. It’s becoming so closed off, that progress is literally going backwards. They’re so self-consumed that they’re not listening to the customer, and I will tell you, without your customer, without listening to your customer, you don’t have a viable business plan. That’s it. Your customer is so important to the growth, and that’s what made my company great.

All I [00:22:00] do is have these ears open at all times and trying to get the best ideas from the customer base, what needs to happen next. What is the next hot vehicle? Where do I need to put my money next? If your customers will tell you that.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, that’s a very good point. That’s very valid.

Paul Meck: But I will tell you, the toy industry doesn’t care. The toy industry is run by designers, and I’m sure you’ve had a plenty of conversations with designers and unfortunately and the way that they are, they’re very self-consumed. They don’t care about the customer. They get paid a salary. And what I found in this industry is if we’re gonna continue to pay people a salary, we’re not gonna see progress because they only want to get out what they have inside them. And I understand that we need to, when you work a job, you have to fulfill some self obligations.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Meck: What I find is if you’re a real true team player, you want to listen to the audience, you want to take all that feedback in. Because for me I only get excited now when I’m making people happy. [00:23:00] That is my drug of choice. I get so excited when I see that person happy that I could either build a new memory I could rekindle a memory that they have from their childhood or growing up owning this car. There’s nothing more exciting to me than making somebody happy.

Jason Hsieh: For sure.

Paul Meck: And that’s what you need to do. If you wanna be successful in business, you have to have that same mindset. Because that is your two things in life you need. You need purpose and passion. If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything.

Jason Hsieh: I totally agree. I believe I mean for any kind of business. Your why need to be bigger than just, oh, I wanna make some money, because that is not gonna, you’re not gonna last.

Paul Meck: You have to have some goals, and I’m telling you, making people happy and seeing them smile, that’s worth more than any amount of money they can give you. I mean that gives me such great purpose. I can go home and be excited every time I know I made people happy.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Yeah, I can relate to that. That’s why I also run a [00:24:00] foundation which we actually donate on our toy to school, so as well.

Paul Meck: That’s huge. We have to keep play and I agree. I did the same thing. My kids went to a private daycare and I saw they didn’t quite have the toy selection that I would like. And they knew I owned a toy company and I said, Hey, let me donate some stuff. Every time I walked in there and saw those kids playing with what I donated, ah you can’t beat that.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, for sure. I know you also do some consulting on the side with other company.

What are some of the common issue in the marketplace and what kind of company do you usually consult with?

Paul Meck: So the, biggest brand name was something that I said I sold Hot Wheels and Matchbox growing up and the biggest problem with that was they weren’t making quality vehicles. So if you drove an amazing Mercedes or, a big time car they’d paint it with some screwy paint job that you just, it’s not relatable to a person with money. So this company called Johnny Lightning. They really stepped up the game. Johnny Lightning made authentic real looking cars that you could say, Hey, I drove that in high school, or That’s the car I want when I grow up. [00:25:00] And they made perfection. What happened was tome a big Japanese manufacturer purchased them and all the tooling just sat in a warehouse in a factory somewhere and I think in China. And so I went back to the original guy that owned the company and I said, Hey Tom let’s get this back. Let’s try this concept of calling leasing tooling. We don’t need to buy the name back. We don’t need to buy the tooling. Let’s just lease it. And hey, if it’s sitting there, why not? Why? What would be their objection? they were, game for it.

What was cool about it is he listened initially and then he decided that he could do it on his own again. And when the stuff came out the package was bulky. As I got older, I’ve been kind became a hippie. I understand the amount of trash I throw out bothers me. It really bothers me. Single use plastic, I was able to reduce the packaging to make it just mostly paper. I was able to put a real paint swatch, so if you went to get your car repainted or if you’d know the paint number, I was able to put that on the package.

Jason Hsieh: Oh, okay.

Paul Meck: One of the biggest things that I really [00:26:00] love is, and I saw a disconnect between the youth and the older people that owned real cars. So if you went and your young child and you went to a car show and you saw a 32 Ford Roadster, that guy never talked to you. He would, he was too busy behind his vehicle talking to his friends. What I did was I said, Hey, let’s put facts on this card. So when that kid buys this die-cast he could have information and have a good conversation with the owner of the real car. But we’re able to connect the youth with the older generation. And that’s a big deal because if we don’t connect both parties, your vehicle will never be worth money.

Jason Hsieh: That’s true. And that’s also educational, right?

Paul Meck: It’s absolute

Jason Hsieh: information.

Paul Meck: so we wanted to put on there what made your vehicle awesome so that kid could come up and say, Hey, you have this kind of engine, or this is the first of its kind and that’s gonna spark interest in the older person. And they’re gonna be like, Hey, I wanna talk to you.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Yeah, Makes sense. Makes sense.

Paul Meck: That was huge. So the disconnect was just not listening to the customer base, and that is the same thing I [00:27:00] talk to every company. If you are not out there at these events or listening to their feedback online, if you’re not taking that all together. We are not gonna progress. And what happened now is unfortunately, some of these companies have been bought out by people that were more dictating to me what they’re gonna do instead of listening to what the customer base wants. And so we changed that. These companies are not going to be that successful. They’re, in fact, they’re hurting us so badly right now. Our sales are down dramatically this year because they, like I said, the doors are closed, their ears are closed.

Jason Hsieh: What is next for Burning Rubber? What else are you working on for the rest of the year?

Paul Meck: Our bigger car shows our big international auto shows, the LA Auto shows our biggest show of the year. Our booth space there is 2000 square feet. nothing else like it on the planet. There’s nowhere that you can go to see that much die-cast that’s basically a mobile setup. We’re there for 10 days. To build out a 2000 square foot booth is a lot of work. So basically [00:28:00] we’re gonna concentrate on the rest of the year is getting this website open, which is the big thing first. And then number two is just do as many events because we find that people are happier in person.

So I think people are tired of buying online because during the pandemic, that was the only option they had. So they want to go to live events, they want to talk to people, they want to interact again. And we are that ticket. You know that toy truck is there to serve you and to hear everything that you want. That is what is, really making people excited to get back out to these events.

Jason Hsieh: Okay. Thank you for sharing. So as well, wrapping today’s interview.

If you had to share just one piece of advice with someone that’s getting started in the toy industry, what would that be?

Paul Meck: Yeah, that’s a, I had to think about that one. That’s a tough one because, being in this industry now for 30 years. 2024 is by far the worst year that we’ve had. The roadblocks are up. My suggestion is don’t let anybody kill your passion. That is it. And I’ve had [00:29:00] the industry kill my passion this year, and that really upsets me. That is the opposite of what they needed to do. They needed to invite me in and say, Hey I know you care more than anyone else does. Let’s get the show on the road. And unfortunately, I see the wrong people being recycled over and over again in these companies. They hit a plateau somewhere and they move on to another company and it’s just, it’s the same song and dance. There’s not progress. It really is. It’s embarrassing. Kids aren’t playing with toys as much and it’s because of the C-suite people that they put a suit and tie on every day. Hey, listen, this is the toy industry. We don’t need a suit and tie.

Let’s be cool. We need to bring the cool back to the toy industry. We need to bring excitement back. We need to have playback. We need to do those things. And so if you’re that kind of person that has passion, if you’re that kind of person that believes that we could bring playback let’s team up. Because the big companies aren’t gonna listen at this point. They’re closed.

Jason Hsieh: yeah Yeah. That’s something I’m working on myself.

Paul Meck: Yeah. I’m excited [00:30:00] for your progress, man. I really am. And it, this is why I did this because I, like your passion and that’s very important to me. And I wanna surround myself with people like you that want progress and what you’re doing with autistic kids is huge. I’m the same way we have nascar. We’re the only ones in California that sell the track edition nascar because we have so many awesome autistic customers that believe in order and operation and to see them happy and to see them talk when they’re, some of them just don’t talk much. They don’t interact much. When they come up and they give my wife a hug or give me a hug and tell me they’re happy to be here you can’t beat it.

Jason Hsieh: I agree. Thank you again for being on the show.

For our listeners, thank you for tuning in to today’s episode of Toy Business Unbox podcast. We hope you have enjoyed the conversation and find it insightful and inspiring. If you like what you have heard, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you’ll never miss a episode. We really appreciate your support and we love it if you can leave us a view and share the podcast with your friend and colleague.

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This is Jason signing off on Toys Business on Box Podcast and I’ll see you in the next episode.