BIG BUSINESS

In the 1950s, during the peak production months of August and September as many as 12,000 dolls a day – in sizes from 12 to 26 inches – were produced by 1,200 full and part-time workers. Unlike other toymakers, Horsman made everything itself, dolls and clothing outfits, even the boxes the dolls came in.

It had its own research lab, where technicians perfected the vinyl compounds. As many as 300 women operated sewing machines, stitching up doll dresses and coats as fast as a team of men with electric blades could cut out the pieces of fabric, 18 thicknesses of cloth at a time.

The unionized employees worked hard and well. They made good dolls and good money. But for the management, that presented a problem. Most doll companies had their manufacturing plants in New York City, and they paid their workers a lot less.

In early 1953, a financially troubled Horsman company announced it would close the plant. Negotiations led to union concessions, and things moved on. But the basic problem -- labor costs – never really went away.

In 1957, the firm was purchased by Botany Mills Inc., but its ongtime management remained. Then, in 1959, Horsman's president for nearly two decades, Lawrence Lipson died and he was succeeded by his son, Gerald.\

Production cost continued to trouble the firm as competition increased. So in 1960, despite an employee-based effort to buy the company and keep it in New Jersey, Horsman moved its operations to a non-unionized plant near Columbia, SC.

While still selling what was primarily a staple line of baby dolls, the increasing impact of television advertising on the toy market caused the company periodically to deviate from this traditional strategy.

Dolls that “did things,” mechanically or electronically -– Horsman's hard-line old-timers scorned them as “trick” dolls -- began to appear in the catalog. These dolls even were heavily advertised on television.

In the early '60s, Botany spun off Horsman to its own holding company, Premier Corporation of America, which soon decided to move away from toymaking. Firm ownership reverted to the management team, Lipson and his associates.

And there were bigger changes going on in the doll industry. Old line firms, some of Horsman's longtime competitors, were going out of business, or were being gobbled up by a few giants. Plants were shut down, production of dolls was shifted to cheaper sources overseas, to Taiwan, to Hong Kong, and, eventually, to mainland China.

Horsman resisted the trend, continuing to make its dolls in South Carolina. By 1980, it was one of the few doll factories, and surely the largest, still operating in the U.S. And in that year, the company was acquired by Drew Industries.

Drew installed new management, and Horsman continued to do well for several years. But traditional doll industry was changing irrevocably. Large retailing chains entered picture, squeezing profit margins. Make-or-break, expensive television advertising was daunting for smaller firms. Hong Kong, Taiwan and, later China-based manufacturers make dolls for a fraction of what it cost Horsman.

Then a sales phenomenon called the Cabbage Patch Kids decimated the staple baby doll market. By 1985, Horsman was virtually broke and closed its South Carolina factory.