Build a Bear Build a Memory Case

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BACKGROUND Build-a-Bear started on an idea, in which a little girl wanted to buy a bear but she didn’t found the one she wanted, so she just said that it would be easier to make her own; that comment was supposedly just that, but for Maxine Clark, the founder was so much more. As a consequence she tries to buy factories that made stuffed animals to make them more successful, but the problem was that they didn’t wanted to sell, so she had to started from scratch, to reinvent the idea of making your own stuffed animal for mall-based retailing. When she starts asking people what they thought about the idea she had, many critics emerged and told her that she was making a very poor business, because of the idea itself and the era seemed like a very bad time to start a chain of mall stores selling stuffed animals, even parents said that it was not going to work, but unlike all of them, kids where very excited about it. Despite all comments Maxine Clark founded Build-a-Bear workshop in 1996 and opened her first store a year later after that, in 1997 at the Saint Louis Galleria in St. Louis Missouri. After the first decade the company had more cheers than naysayers; the company hit number 25 on Business Week´s Hot Growth list of fast-expanding small companies, and Maxine won Fast Company´s Customer-Centered Leader Award. Since 2005 annual revenues reached $359 million and kept growing 20% annually. The company’s stock came public on November 2004 and from that time the price has soared 56%. Since the opening of the first store, the company nowadays has over 400 stores worldwide in United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Ireland etc. and over 120 million teddy bears and other stuffed animals. The company also extended their in-store interactive experience with the virtual website at Bearville.com™. UPDATING Build a Bear is an important company in the world, since

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