Hundreds of people have passed through Paul Meck’s booth at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach‘s Lifestyle Expo each day this weekend.
And that’s no surprise.
Meck’s massive collection of diecast toy vehicles — neatly organized by year, make and model, and displayed on a bright orange water truck-turned-expo vehicle — is sure to catch anyone’s eye.
“We have more than 150,000 (toy cars),” Meck, of Claremont, said at the Grand Prix on Sunday, April 16, while simultaneously ringing up customers eager to purchase the miniature version of their most-beloved car. “There’s only about 4,000 on display here — that’s about 1% of our collection.”
Meck, along with his wife, Katie, have come to Long Beach to serve the niche interests of collectors at the Grand Prix for nearly a decade.
But his career as a diecast toy car collector — and seller — started much earlier.
Back home in Pennsylvania, at the ripe old age of 7, Meck got a box of Topps baseball cards for Christmas, since the factory where they were manufactured was just about 40 minutes from his home.
Shortly after, he and his family started working events to sell the baseball cards he’d collected, Meck said.
“My customer service was different — people trusted a 7-, 8-year-old kid to get a list,” Meck said. “I would tell them, ‘Whatever you want, I’ll make sure I get it for you,’ and I’d call them once I got the list completed.”
He continued selling baseball cards until he was about 15, when he made the transition to diecast toy cars.
Since then, Meck has expanded the business every year — eventually becoming so successful that his company, Burning Rubber Toys Co., makes the circuit at auto shows throughout California each year.
“Its all about making people happy — it really comes down to the excitement when people buy off of us because they know we actually care about them,” Meck said. “The way we merchandise all this is literally listening to the customer base, and making sure that each year we can provide them with what they’re looking for, because you can’t walk in anywhere to get this.”
It’s that aspect of the business — the personalization, helping people find a niche diecast car they’ve been after for years and creating new memories for customers — that keeps the Mecks so invested in the business. .
“It’s about rekindling old memories,” Meck said, “and creating new ones.”
The pair have seen generations of customers come and go — and they’ve watched children grow up into adults.
“(Its) the person (whose) dad passed away and they grew up building a truck with them, so they want to find that,” Katie Meck said. “So those are really (who matter).”
Their strong customer base, Paul Meck said, is largely a result of his insistence on personalizing the diecast toy car collecting experience. But he also said he’s concerned that the long-term survival of the industry is in jeopardy, as toy car manufacturers continue prioritizing mass production.
“The toy industry is terrible,” Meck said, adding that he’s worked as a consultant for several companies that have opted not to incorporate his advice into their manufacturing processes. “They truly just make what they want, and hope you like it. I don’t believe in destroying the world’s resources on something that doesn’t need to exist.”
Instead, Meck said, the industry needs to refocus on offering niche, specific cars — for markets he knows exist from his decades of selling toy cars across the country.
“This new generation wants to spend money on this stuff but it has to be what they’re looking for — and we know exactly what they’re looking for,” Meck said. “But if the companies don’t fill their needs, then we’re gonna lose that generation.”
But in the meantime, he said, Burning Rubber Toys Co. will continue doing what it does best: Helping all people — from the car-obsessed to the casual shopper — find the diecast toy car that gets their engines going.
Source: Orange County Register
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