If you had your own bjd company, and an unlimited budget...?

If it's enough for that and the dollmakers are willing, I'd resurrect Dream of Doll. I'd *love* to see a dod mature mini line, too - Shall in 1/4? Take my million.

 

I’d expand Twigling’s offerings—they have a really awesome modular 1/3 fem body—they have 4 bust sizes, 2 torso lengths, 2 thigh options. I’d have them create equally modular masc parts for that body, and perhaps a muscular fem option, all interchangeable with the original so that if you want you can create dolls that represent trans bodies. And then I’d spend most of the “company” money ordering myself every possible combination for “testing” purposes, of course

 

I would love to start a company that specializes in alien-themed dolls! I love when companies get creative with bizarre and sci-fi sculpts. Another idea I love is a company that offers a lot of body type diversity, not only with plus size bodies but also in regards to age. There aren’t enough BJDs representing older folks!

 

I’d offer the most customizable options, any head, any body, any outfit, wig, eyes, faceup, and everything else. A one stop shop for bjd, an a la carte full set. I would take polls on what collectors want and try to offer diversity.

 

I'd probably take one of the Iplehouse sculptors (or straight SartoriaJ, who is an ex-sculptor of them) and get them to sculpt heads that are leaning towards an older age bracket.
So 40+ years old faces, at least. 65-72cm bodies in various flavors that are somewhat decent at posing. Skintones ranging from white to a very dark brown (and some fantasy colors), different races (not just white European). Basically what is currently already being done by many Russian artists, but unfortunately only with smaller dolls.
SartoriaJ also has the extra ability of being able to offer clothes as well, so I basically just gotta snatch them to cover all the fronts there. I'd also get in Andinsky for the more dramatic and heavily embroidered limited outfits.

Oh, and most importantly, FOR BOTH MALE AND FEMALE.
I am tired of the 75cm guys and the at most 65cm girls. I want a 70cm muscled female doll that does not have a snatched waist and stick arms, I want one that looks like she rips apart wood blocks as a hobby
And likewise, I want guys that have a "regular dude" body. And if muscular, not necessarily the super dehydrated, low fat look. Less Jackman-Wolverine and more Reeves-Superman at most.

Wigs, eyes and face-ups are a little more tricky.
Since the stuff I like to see the most is not really feasible to be offered in an "always available on demand" kind of way (like angora wigs, or urethane eyes), and the very detailed realistic face-ups are not exactly meant for mass production either, I would probably go the "limited full-sets" route. Clothes are different because it can be SO hard to shop for a specific body that falls outside of the usual norm (Iplehouse is a good example), that I think a certain amount of clothes should be sold by the doll maker as well. Everything else though can be easily commissioned/bought elsewhere usually.
So yes, I would mostly offer blank dolls and some full-sets, and those full-sets are really elaborate (angora wigs, urethane eyes, very detailed realistic face-ups, full outfit).

 

Check out the artist Nothing Sapiens if you don't already know them!

I feel like there are some great suggestions already, so I tried to think of a totally different direction instead; a million dollars wouldn't nearly be enough for this, based on what I understand of the industry, but pretending for a second that it was, I'd launch more ABS affordable alternatives (like Hujoo years ago, and Penny's Box and more today). I think they fill a great niche, over the past year I've watched a non-small section of the fashion doll community get their first BJDs via these cheap ABS dolls. I think this has likely prevented more than a few people from going down a bad path, as Penny's Box and similar are affordable and easy-to-buy legit BJDs.

So in a magical world where I can fit the costs of injection-molding a slew of different doll sizes and designs into just one million dollars, that's what I'd do.

I think my actual dream would be the same as @Saphira, I want aliens n' stuff, but if I was trying to come up with a somewhat viable business and figure out a specific demographic etc etc, I'd try for making affordable legit injection-molded BJDs to bridge that gap between playline doll prices and resin art doll prices.

 

I would buy this girl in every colour you offer twice over. I’ve had to mod male bodies to get a figure like that for a female character!!

 

Since I am already running a sort of semi hobby-level doll busines, I come in to this from a slightly different direction from some of the previous answers.

I would invest in good casting equipment first, preferably good enough to make it possible to cast a nice range of colors. Right now I am stuck with white and pastels.
Then I would hire someone to do the "boring" stuff like marketing, acounting and (in a perfetct world) someone whos job it was to source casting materials and packaging materials.
Considering the running costs of that, I don't know how much further than that the money would go. That would depend on how much I could increase the profit with those investments.
Hmmm... maybe the first thing I should do is finding an investment manager...

But, yea. Anything I could do to make it so that I could focus on the actual doll making.

 

I miss the old-school style of Volks BJDs and would probably do something like that. I love dolls that look like dolls, stylized and full of character. More elf ear options for each head sculpt. I'd have options for faceups that are both simple and classic or modern, a little taste of the faceups from yesteryear and also faceups like what you find nowadays. Good casting equipment is necessary for good quality dolls, especially since I like a little heft in my dolls.

I'd also love to have a good selection of quality outfits available, and I'd have that available when you make your order so you basically make yourself your own full-set.

One last thing that would be cool would be that each doll comes with a pet/familiar that 'matches' the vibe of the doll. You can pick from a variety of animals that are simply jointed (at least so the head moves separate from the body) and has an option to faceup the animal similarly to the doll. Everyone deserves a friend.

 

I would get with CP/Fairyland/Luts and get them to hash things out so I could sell the old Delf sculpts again in their original format. Then I would get someone that could help design some fantasy style additions for the Delf bodies. Anthro feet, wings, tails, ect. And of course, more Delf styled heads and fantasy ones too (cat heads with the proper Delf proportion being top on my list).

 

I think I would be tempted to do sort of an "artist collective" sort of thing? Like hosting a bunch of artists with very unique and distinct styles that may not otherwise have the mass appeal to be financially viable. I don't have any specific theme in mind, just... weird and creative and different.

Sort of like a doll art museum you can buy stuff from. Even better if we could open an actual museum to display the dolls! and then people could see them in person before buying them.

 

I would love to take the original hard plastic dolls of the 40's and 50's like from American Character, Arranbee, Madame Alexander, Effanbee to name a few. And make them into BJD's they had some of the most beautiful face molds. They would be a little bit larger than MSD size or the size could be reduced slightly to fit the standard. I would love that!

 

I'm personally not interested in starting my own BJD company, whereas I'm more keen to advocate for existing artists and their IP. So if I can go in a totally different direction? I'd use that million against recasters.

I'm thinking of the Chinese sculptor Joydoll, who attempted to open a legal case against the very notorious Chinese recaster Luo for recasting one of her dolls. She shared a bit of this experience on Weibo, it was quite eye-opening for me to read about a sculptor's own experience fighting a recaster. Amongst other things, she said that the cost to keep paying a lawyer is already enough to make her give up: as a solo sculptor, she doesn't have that kind of finances to keep pressing legal action against a bigger company.

I don't have a law background and have no idea how one begins taking legal action against a recaster, but I do know that it costs a lot of money. So I'd use that million dollars to start investigating what it takes to bring a lawsuit against a recaster, and/or help fund artists (such as Joydoll) who are already taking legal action themselves. It's probably not going to go very far knowing that lawsuits can costs tens even hundreds of 1000s, but it's better than nothing, I think?

 

Probably end up churning out a very specific type of doll: Fantasy sculpts, extra weird, probably like the weirder Doll Chateau fantasy dolls but in an up to eleven sort of way, though I may go for an even distribution of anime and semi-real but still stylized sculpts.... mainly because that's what I like! But probably for the sake of fans of the more conventional stuff I'd still sell elves since I still like those, and kemonomimis, I loved the Dream Valley foxes and wolves so much!

 

I'd make a bunch of 1/1 scaled resin dolls. If you've ever seen Spiritdoll's or Dollzone's 130 cm dolls and thought "whoa, those are so big.... who's the target audience for those, anyway....?" -- it's me!! I really like big dolls!! LOL But they're usually out of my price range, so I don't actually own any of that size.

I'd especially like a really big anime-style doll-- kind of like Parabox's (off-topic) 110 cm dolls, which I think are vinyl or PVC? But I'd like mine to be out of resin :V (I know there are certain other companies that make life size anime dolls, but I really don't like silicone and I don't need "adult features" )

I'm sure creating such large dolls is very expensive for the manufacturers, but I'd make them all very affordably priced and provide free world-wide shipping. I'd probably lose a lot of money and swiftly go out of business oh well!

 

I would prefer to play a support role with my deep pockets rather than a creative one! I am not so confident in my ideas at all, but it would be cool to sponsor and coordinate different makers to collaborate and create the fullset dolls of their dreams. Maybe we could make collections by letting each of the artists design their own interpretation of some prompt, and then everyone works together to make it happen!

 

Well, if I am not spending it on my own wants or debts, making fantasy full sets. Work with the people who designed the costumes for Lord of the Rings/the Hobbit and other fantasy films and make them in scale for our dolls. Start back up the mini me head business that I think DiM did? MAKE LEATHER SHOES IN ALL SIZES AND STYLES.

But I also really like that recaster idea - take them down legally as best we could.

 

Yup. This.

This would require a multi-pronged approach.
1) Register every company in the US for their own copyright.
2) Hire the nastiest (and most expensive) IP law firm to go after the sellers in their home jurisdictions. I'm thinking whoever works for Ferrari.
3) Lobby the US trade agencies (list here) to stop imports into the US.

This would require, erm, a LOT of money. I realize this sounds very US-centric, but the US is a huge consumer market. Shut down access to the US market, and suddenly, the business is a lot less profitable.

Oh, but if there is any money left over: BJD after-sales service. Remake broken parts from defunct companies, offer restringing services, etc.