← How I Built This with Guy Raz
How I Built This with Guy Raz
Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire
01:04:04
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- [00:06]
Guy Raz
I have to imagine there were some people, maybe they didn't say it to you, who thought this was so weird. Maxine Clark, the lady who ran Payless, like, yeah, is starting a stuffed animal thing? Like, what is she thinking? Is she nuts? Like, I just have to imagine people were saying that maybe behind your back.
- [00:26]
Maxine Clark
No, they said it to me. They weren't shy.
- [00:36]
Guy Raz
Welcome to How I Built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how a fruitless search for a Beanie Baby inspired Maxine Clark to start Build a Bear, a make your own stuffed animal store that grew into a global phenomenon. In 1992, an article in Forbes magazine pointed out that of all the top positions in Fortune 500 companies, only 5% were held by women. Which makes today's guest, Maxine Clark, kind of a pioneer, because that year, 1992, she became the president of Payless Shoes, which at the time was a fast growing subsidiary of a Fortune 500 company, the May Department Stores Company. Up until that point, Maxine had spent her entire career working for the May Company. It was a huge, sprawling empire, one of the largest department store chains in America. Maxine was 43 years old and at the top of her game. And just four years later, Maxine decided to give it all up, the prestige, the salary, and the perks to go out on her own. So you might assume she'd try and launch a new fashion concept or a footwear brand or something related to what department stores generally sold. But instead, Maxine came up with a concept that seemed out of left field. A store that would allow kids to build their own stuffed animal. Now, there were plenty of people who couldn't really understand how this idea would scale. But Maxine knew two things about kids. They loved stuffed animals and they loved craft projects. She opened the first Build a bear store in St. Louis in late 1997. And within five years, Build a Bear had 100 stores and malls across America. Over the next 20 years, as shopping malls went into decline, Build A Bear managed not only to survive, but in many cases, to become the reason kids wanted to go to the mall. Today, there are hundreds of Build A Bear stores around the US And a thriving online business. And that's saying a lot for a brand that's often been written off as a fad. Last year, the company reported over half a billion dollars in sales, all from kids wanting to stuff and dress and personalize their own teddy bear. As for Maxine, she grew up in the 1950s and 60s in Coral Gables, Florida. Her dad was an electrician and her mom was a social worker who during the 19 for was actually a secretary for the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
- [03:27]
Maxine Clark
My mother was hired into the typing pool in Albany when she was the first lady of New York. And Eleanor took my mother with her to D.C. because my mother was a very fast typist and also a very fast stenographer. And my mother also invented her own form of stenography so that nobody job security. But also because things Eleanor told her were very confidential. And so she kept a record of those, but she didn't want anybody else to read them. So she was in Washington D.C. also. And my mother was on her traveling team and they went to places to see what was going on in the country so she could share it with Franklin because he couldn't travel like that. And they went to asylums and they went to hospitals and they went to orphanages and they saw how poorly people were treated. And her dictate to the people when Franklin died to my mother and other women on her staff were when you're going home to settle wherever you're going to be, do something that's going to change the lives of the children and the families that we saw on our travels. And so that's exactly what my mother did. Basically she and three of her friends ran a school for children with down syndrome. That was what they did after Eleanor Roosevelt. And so she wasn't making a lot of money. She was basically still being a secretary, an organizer, an advocate for children that were differently abled.
- [04:49]
Guy Raz
Yeah. Given that your mom had worked for Eleanor roosevelt for almost 15 years or maybe about 15 years. And sounds like she was very into social justice and was probably a very committed sort of New Deal Democrat. I imagine she probably worshiped the Roosevelts. Right. You know, you're growing up in the 60s, this is the civil rights era. Right. You've got all kinds of things happening. Was your mom, did she get involved in some of that, some of those protests? Did she ever bring you along?
- [05:22]
Maxine Clark
Yes. When I was 16, my mother, we went on the bus from Miami to Selma, Alabama, and we marched in Selma, Alabama. But we were in the way, in the back of the line. I had no idea the impact that that would have on my life or on America's life. No idea whatsoever. And that I was so appreciative of my mother exposing me to such incredible opportunity. But my mother was not a doting mother. I mean, she was not that kind of person, but she would definitely encourage it. You know, you can be anything that you want to be. And I don't think she felt she could be anything that she wanted to be, but she loved what she did.
- [05:59]
Guy Raz
Hmm. I know that you studied journalism at the University of Georgia in the 1960s, and I guess you originally thought about becoming a civil rights lawyer. And I read that you actually moved to Washington D.C. after college with the intention of going to law school. But somehow I guess your plans got sidetracked because you decided to earn some money and you went and worked for a department store. What's the story?
- [06:23]
Maxine Clark
Yes, I got a job at the executive training program at HECC Company in Washington D.C. but that was an interesting story too, because when I called up for the job, they told me that they were all filled, but I wanted to work at the Heck Company. I don't, you know, it's like how, how random things happen to you. But I wanted to work there. And I walked back down there and I told them I had an interview at 2 o' clock or whatever time it was. I did not have an interview at 2 o', clock, but they would see if somebody would meet with me. And Stanley Mont was his name. He was a very tall man. He said, well, let me take you for a cup of coffee. We, you know, we went into the restaurant and it was empty. It was after lunch, around 2 o', clock, and a man comes in, a bald headed man, kind of heavyset. And he sits down at our table and he introduces himself as Alan Bluestein. And he said, hi, I'm Alan Bluestein. What's your name? And I told him my name and he said, tell me about yourself. And I told him about myself. And when he got up from the table, he said to Stanley Mott, I don't know how many people you have in that training class hire her and pay her $150 more a month than you paid the last. And so I had a job. I think part of it was that I wasn't on an interview. I was just talking to a nice man. I did not know he was the president of the company at the time, the president of that division of the Heck company. And I just was myself.
- [07:46]
Guy Raz
So you are, you know, you get this meeting with this guy, Stanley Mott, who's running Hechts.
- [07:53]
Maxine Clark
He's running hr. He was the HR guy.
- [07:55]
Guy Raz
Hr, right. And Alan Bluestein is the head of Hechts, which is this Mid Atlantic.
- [07:59]
Maxine Clark
Yes.
- [08:00]
Guy Raz
And he happens to come to the lunch and sees you and says, Hire this kid.
- [08:04]
Maxine Clark
Yes, yes. And I lucked out on that because when I walked into the store, it wasn't as fancy as Woodward and Lothrop or Garfinkel's. And I wasn't a fancy person. I thought I could really help. Cause I was very tuned into the consumer. I was the consumer. I was this young working woman coming to work. I needed everything. I had nothing. I didn't have furniture in my apartment. I didn't have clothes to wear to work. I had to buy everything. And I didn't not have a lot of money to do it with. And that company was just coming into its own. Alan Bluestein, who was the president, was a very creative guy also. And he took to me, you know, it's like just really a nice guy. I didn't think of him as, he's the boss and I better, you know, stand up straight. And you know, I didn't think. I wasn't intimidated. And part of that was also my upbringing. Because while my father and mother were not unusually successful people, they had friends that were successful and that I was around those people. And so I saw what success looks like in it. I wasn't as intimidated. I was comfortable, actually. And I was a student, always a student, listening and learning and taking notes in my head.
- [09:09]
Guy Raz
So you are. So you get this job and you're not going to be a sales rep on the floor of a Hecht's store. Right. You're trained to work in like purchasing or marketing. Right. You're trained to be an executive. So what were you learning how to do?
- [09:25]
Maxine Clark
I was an executive trainee to be an assistant buyer to a buyer. And the buyer that I had, he got ill early in my career, very early in my tenure there, and I had to fill in for him.
- [09:37]
Guy Raz
Wow.
- [09:38]
Maxine Clark
And all the people that he sold to, that sold to him, the manufacturers were so worried that I was going to destroy. I'm sure this was what they were thinking. She'll destroy the department. What did I know? I was just two months out of college and so they helped me. They wanted him to be successful and in turn made me successful. And I learned so much from that scary, very scary nine months of time that I was basically just pulling things out of a hat. It was my gut instincts that were leading me. They had no idea what a soak up sponge I was. And I love data and I loved digging in. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to do it. I loved it. I loved being around clothing and apparel. I loved it far more than I could have Imagined. And I was good at. I was better at it than I could have imagined also.
- [10:27]
Guy Raz
Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, you clearly are digging into this and digging into what customers were going to want to buy. And I imagine, I mean, you know, you were. You had to learn about different product lines and things that you were not as familiar with. But I guess probably you naturally, you knew, like, women's apparel, because you're a woman and you wore clothing.
- [10:51]
Maxine Clark
Right.
- [10:52]
Guy Raz
Did you eventually. I mean, or was that what you were focused on, or did you kind of eventually move in that direction?
- [10:57]
Maxine Clark
No, that's what I was focused on.
- [10:59]
Guy Raz
Right.
- [10:59]
Maxine Clark
Because I really needed to buy clothes for work, and there wasn't anything that I would even want to wear. You know, it was, like, really ugly and very masculine influenced, you know, little bow ties, you know, suits. And then I got curious as to when people did buy in my department. Where else were they buying? What else did they go? What else went with it? And one of the good things at that time was that every department store had its own credit card.
- [11:23]
Guy Raz
Yeah.
- [11:23]
Maxine Clark
And so I went to Silver Spring, Maryland, where we had our credit card offices, and I started plotting out on my big green legal pad how when somebody bought something in my department, what else did they buy? What was the shoes? They went with it. And then I started looking at what they did in the first three months that they had been in our department. It was just eye opening, and I was so excited. It was like I discovered gold. And I came back to show my boss's boss what I had covered. And I said, I think we have something here that we could put together a catalog and use vendor money co op advertising to get it in the customer's hands. He said, if you can sell the advertising, go for it. When I came in on a Monday morning, after we dropped the catalog, the ladies in the call center, and there were these old ladies that worked in a call center on real telephones. They said, you're in trouble. And I said, what do you mean I'm in trouble? And he said, well, I think you sold out of everything that was in this catalog already, because that's all the calls we've gotten all weekend long. And because I was successful, my boss's boss and the boss in St. Louis and people, it was noticeable, the results. That's what I tell people. Get a job where your results are, you can take credit for your results. Because I was in a position where those results were catching attention.
- [12:39]
Guy Raz
Okay, so you're clearly on the up and up at hex and about four and a half years after you start working for the company, I guess you get an opportunity to go work for the parent company for May department stores in St. Louis, which is their headquarters. And that, I mean, that must have been exciting because, I mean, now you're going to be. I mean, this looks like it's a career, right? I mean, it seems like you had put law school on hold because you had this opportunity. So, I mean, I imagine you liked it, right? Were you happy with the job?
- [13:12]
Maxine Clark
I definitely loved it. Mostly I worked for the CEO of the company, and I got to travel all around to all of the different divisions of the May company. I also got to work on acquisitions for the company, which required some knowledge of legal mergers and acquisitions. And I would take it to our legal department and they would explain to me about it, what I had to do, what I needed to think about. And I kept getting promoted to one of the divisions. I was involved in the acquisition of the Volume shoe company for the May Company. And I think that not too long after that, they promoted me to be. To go to Venture Stores, which was our discount store division, to be a merchandise man, to be the head of marketing for Venture Stores. And that was a whole new experience, too, because I had not been over a marketing department. And that was a really interesting business because we were creating fashion at affordable price points. And that was where I met my husband, because my husband worked at that division. And then at this point, I'm pretty high up in the. In the chain of a division and probably on a track to go run a big division someday. And that division became Payless Shoes eventually, when, about 10 years later. And I got passed over a few times for a department store for Venture Stores. But the job that was meant for me was Payless. That was the job that I was supposed to have. And I appreciated that after I got it, but not before. I was mad that I wasn't getting the other jobs earlier. Payless was the largest division of Bay Department Stores, and they made me the president of Payless Shoes Source. And it was like a family business because I had been part of the acquisition team. And it was so different than I could have imagined. I would have not imagined myself being in that job. I thought of lesser divisions, smaller divisions that I would have been running.
- [14:58]
Guy Raz
How many people do you remember that worked at hq?
- [15:01]
Maxine Clark
A couple thousand.
- [15:02]
Guy Raz
Probably just for Payless.
- [15:04]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, that were between our distribution center that was in Topeka and Payless, or a lot of people that worked there. It was very. It was a four and a half billion dollar company. I mean, two and a half billion dollar company, 4,500 stores.
- [15:19]
Guy Raz
Okay, so you're so it's like, I mean, a big company, a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of meetings. Because I've read that you actually didn't love it. You didn't love that job.
- [15:31]
Maxine Clark
I didn't love the job because the further away you get from the customer, the further away you get from the customer. And that's where my juice came from. Being with a customer, being in the stores. And I knew that this was 1992. Retailing was starting to change pretty dramatically and technology was changing. And May company was not a forerunner. They were not at the future of technology. In fact, we weren't allowed to email anybody out of the company, only inside the company. I think there was a worry about trade secrets getting out or something. And I knew that this technology. I didn't have to do those spreadsheets anymore. I could use Excel. You know, this was like, really? Why are we not using this technology? I was starting to see that my vision for what I wanted to do and could do was getting out ahead of where May company was. And I did know that they wanted to take Payless public. And I did not want to be the CEO of Payless in Topeka, Kansas the rest of my life. You know, I didn't. I decided that I would take my money and I would go back home and I would figure out my next step.
- [16:38]
Guy Raz
So what were you thinking of doing?
- [16:40]
Maxine Clark
Maybe working for somebody else, Maybe starting my own company. I did not have any idea what it would be. There was a long Runway still. And I had learned a lot, been a lot, been to many, many vendors, knew how to do a lot of things I never had, didn't know to do 20 years before and was thinking about what could we do to reinvent retail. And I didn't know, but I did think it was going to be something. If I was going to open a business, it was going to be something for children because this computer stuff was happening pretty quickly. And I was afraid that kids would not remember what a retail store was like and have those experiences with their parents that I had with my mother, just looking in the windows even. And so I came back to St. Louis to kind of get my kid think back. And I don't have children. I immerse myself with my friend's kids. And I spent this is my kid think. You know, when you're a little kid and your mother says, you can't do this, why Not Mommy, you just can't. Well, I think I had too much of that because corporate life is like that. You can't do that. You can't spend that money. You can't build that store there. You can't, you can't, you can't. I wanted to get my kid think, yes, you can. Yes you can back. And it was the beginning of the technology in this country, and I knew that was gonna be something really exciting. I had a couple of business ideas around that technology, by the way, for children, and I needed the time to go and investigate some of these things.
- [18:04]
Guy Raz
So tell me, just what were some of the ideas that you initially were thinking of?
- [18:09]
Maxine Clark
Well, part of it was customer service. You know, like, how do we teach children? How do we treat them? Like they're really valuable to us in society and also in their retail experiences. I had this idea that we could use technology to do so. Like we would create a store that might be a super duper learning store, that when the child walked in the store, the store would say hello to them. It would know them because they had a membership card. They were a member in the store and would say, hi, John, how are you? When you walked over to the book department, it would say, did you enjoy Harry Potter? And when I looked into it more, I realized we couldn't really do that because of COPPA and all these security things. But there was. The technology was there to do it. So I just kept thinking about what could I do to make the experience for children more personal.
- [18:55]
Guy Raz
Yeah.
- [18:55]
Maxine Clark
And I immersed myself with my friend's kids to kind of get their point of view. And one day I picked Katie and Jack up, my next door neighbors up from school, and we went looking. They wanted to get stop in a store that had Beanie Babies, if you remember. The Beanie Baby craze. Sure.
- [19:12]
Guy Raz
Made billions of dollars or a billion at least.
- [19:15]
Maxine Clark
And the store in our neighborhood, the toy store, had a big sign in the window that said, we have Beanie Babies. But we went in the store, they didn't. They were sold out because the parents trolled the stores all day looking to collect them for their kids. And they took the discovery away from the child. And Katie was really sad. And Jack, he didn't care so much. But Katie said, you know, these are so easy. We could make these. She meant go home to my house and do a craft project because I had a big room in my basement that was all crafts and the kids loved to come over and. But I heard something different. The light bulb went on and that was the day that the idea for Build a Bear workshop was born. Yeah, I knew that kids love field trips. They love knowing how things are made. Yeah, I knew that this, that she had spouted something very. Just normal kid, just like I did when I was a kid. Just a normal thing that came out of her mouth. But mostly people don't listen to kids. I listen to her. And I could see it. Cause I'd been in factories, I knew exactly what it was gonna look like in my head. Willy Wonka. It's like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. I could see this place where kids could make their own stuffed animals. And that day that Katie said that when I told her that, I said, she asked, she came upstairs and I was at the computer. What are you doing? And I told her, she said, well, I didn't mean that. I said, I know you didn't, but I think it's a really good idea. What do you think? And she said, I don't know, but maybe we could do it.
- [20:40]
Guy Raz
So you, you're really excited about this and tell me like what you do. What, What?
- [20:44]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, I started to look whether it existed, whether there was a factory in America making stuffed animals that I could actually buy and retrofit to be customer facing versus a factory, a real factory. And I had a lot of experience in building brands that they were brands from a company. And I called my friend Adrian Weiss, who is brand builder in Chicago. We'd done many things together and she loved the idea. And, you know, the more I told her, the more she sketched, so to speak, she could hear what I was saying in my voice. And it just came out, you know, I started writing a business plan, literally a very detailed business plan of what, what I would want if I was this child walking into the store. Because I love stuffed animals. My. My teddy bear. I loved my teddy bear. Teddy was his name. And I took him everywhere with me. And Katie and Jack both had their own bears too when they were little, and they took their bears everywhere. And so this was not a new trend. This was not something that is like a trend. I had to invent kids loving tre bears. How could I make it so that kids would be so much more engaged with their stuffed animal and maybe even have more of them. That was the research was my. I really built a board of advisors that were children. The other part of it was that my favorite place to go for all of my birthdays was to go to Disney World with my friends. And the magic growing up with Walt Disney had a huge impact on me. And I thought, could we create a version of this in a small way, something Disney esque at a mall in America? Could we do this?
- [22:23]
Guy Raz
So you, you start to come up with this idea and from what I gather, you identify a couple of factories in the US that were still making stuffed animals. And I guess you go and visit with the idea that you would buy those. You just buy. Maybe they are for sale. Maybe you could buy the factories.
- [22:43]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, because a lot of the bankers were telling me that if I bought something, it would be easier than inventing it from scratch, that you could use it as collateral. I see that it would be maybe a better, a faster way to get where I wanted to go. They were wrong about that, but that's what they. So I was investigating that, doing my homework, competitive shopping.
- [23:01]
Guy Raz
And the idea would be, because I'm, I'm trying to, I mean, I'm trying to figure out why it would make sense. Right? I mean, okay, there's a factory in Vermont, there's a factory in California, but you had this idea to have a shop where you actually see the process being made. So what would the benefit of owning a factory in Vermont or in, in California be if you actually wanted a sort of a whole experience on site?
- [23:25]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, I was gonna reinvent those companies from being what they were into being a store because they gave tours to people in their factory. They sold teddy bears that they made in those places. So their factory was like Yankee Candle or, you know, they sold bears from their factory. Anyway, I knew if people were going on tours of a factory that made stuffed animals, imagine if it was in their hometown, what they might do. Could we miniaturize it? Make it feasible to be in a mall with the. Right. Some equipment, you know, like our stuffing machine, make it magical like Willy Wonka.
- [24:02]
Guy Raz
Okay, here's what I'm wondering about. You had this, this 1996. 97. You had a 25 year career. Right. More in retail. Right. Including running one of the biggest shoe brands in the United States.
- [24:18]
Maxine Clark
Right.
- [24:19]
Guy Raz
I'm just wondering. We know what happened, but I'm just going back to 1997. I have to imagine there were some people, maybe they didn't say it to you directly, who thought this was so weird. Like, wait, Maxine Clark, the lady who ran Payless, like the, the boss of the bath app, is starting a stuffed animal thing. Like, what is she thinking? Is she nuts? Like, I just have to imagine people were saying that maybe behind your back.
- [24:47]
Maxine Clark
No, they said it to me. They weren't shy.
- [24:52]
Guy Raz
When we come back in just a moment, Maxine ignores the doubters and starts building the machinery for Build a Bear. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built this Foreign. This message is brought to you by Apple Card For a limited time, when you get a new Apple card and purchase AirPods Pro 3 at Apple, you can earn back the cost up to 250 daily cash. New AirPods Pro and up to $250 bonus daily cash back. Now that's music to my ears. Subject to credit approval, limitations and spend requirements apply. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs bank usa, Salt Lake City Branch Terms and more at Apple Co AirPods success is a journey, especially when it comes to your finances One of the most common obstacles in our financial journey is dealing with high interest debt. It can often leave people feeling trapped, but it doesn't have to. If you're dealing with high interest debt, there is a way forward. A SOFI personal loan could consolidate all your high interest debt into one low interest monthly payment, helping you craft a roadmap to paying down your debt. It even comes with no fees required, getting you a financial win right away. Keep pushing on your journey to financial success. You could even get as soon as the same day funding. View your rate for a SOFI personal loan or@sofi.com Guyraz loans originated by Sofi Bank NA member FDIC terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891 Fast Fund's term apply@sofi.com Guyraz even if you want to take care of your mental health, it can be hard knowing where to start and when you start worrying about the costs and logistics. You might talk yourself out of finding the help you need, but fortunately there's Rula. Rula makes it easy to access affordable, quality mental health care with sessions costing an average of $15 with insurance. They accept over 120 insurance plans nationwide and actually show you your cost upfront so you're not guessing or worrying about some surprise bill later. Rula focuses on quality care. They vet their providers and monitor outcomes, and 93% of patients report feeling better and making real progress. With Rula, you can find a therapist for your specific needs in as little as five minutes and even book an appointment as soon as the next day. So instead of overthinking it, you can actually take the first step. If you're ready to stop talking yourself out of finding care and making progress, then head to rula.com that's r u l a.com and take the first step. Hey, welcome back to How I Built this. I'm Guy raz. So it's 1997, and Maxine is prepared to sink a big chunk of her savings into a stuffed animal store. And even though a lot of folks are telling her she's kind of nuts, a few people are warming up to the idea.
- [28:15]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, it grew on them. So just sort of an example, when I went to the couple of banks to talk to them about a line of credit, I really didn't need their money. But in order to do this shipping, you have to have this line of credit. So at first they all thought I was crazy. The third or fourth meeting, they were wearing teddy bear socks or a teddy bear tie. They were getting in the mode. They started to notice teddy bears in their life more than they maybe had noticed before. And I think that it was really an interesting thing because, you know, Ralph Lauren has teddy bears on his clothes. That was the time of his teddy bear moment. And so it was. People are starting to, maybe this is something. There's something to this. Even though teddy bears were not our whole product line, only a few of our maybe 20% were bears. And I was. So I had such a detailed business plan. Yeah, you know, 10 year business plan. And I had a lot of friends in the shopping center business because Payless had stores and shopping centers. I was at shopping. My office was right next to the shopping center people at May Co. I went to the ICSE.
- [29:15]
Guy Raz
The ICSC is the council of Shopping Centers, I think. Right?
- [29:18]
Maxine Clark
Yes, yes. I talked to people that were very forward thinking, Simon. The people that owned Mall of America.
- [29:26]
Guy Raz
I just want to jump in and say, yes, you had incredible experience and contacts because you'd been in the retail business for so long. And May, of course, was in the mall business. They had stores in the mall. So, like your contact, like, I'm just thinking of me as, as a friend or consultant or a possible investor. I would have been like, yes, Maxine Clark, she's the real deal. She's a person I'd want to invest in. But then I would probably say, but Maxine, you have incredible deep experience. You know, the malls, you know retailers, you know, the supply chain. You've got contacts and people who want to help you. But I mean, this seems like a business that might work for five, ten years at most. Like, kids are so fickle. You look at toys, one toy lasts for a year or two and they move on. How did you have conviction that this could be more than just a Passing fad.
- [30:23]
Maxine Clark
The kid in me knew, knew this my favorite thing to do at school. One of my favorite things was going on field trips was going to the bakery, going to the dairy that we made a field trip to. Kids still like doing all these things and they don't get to do it. I mean, I wasn't building a big theme park, right. I was building a store that was a theme park in a mall. And Mall of America was really successful. And the mall in Canada West, Edmonton Mall, that is such a big mall, they all had entertainment features in them. At Mall of America, they had that big snoopy village, you know, they had all that stuff going on. And retailing was starting to change and you needed a reason that families were going to come to the mall, right? And this was a reason that families would come to a mall. But I wasn't, you know, there's no guarantees anything. I decided I could invest about a million and a half dollars and if that, if it went bust, it went bust, you know, that was it. I didn't have any investors at that, at that moment in time, and I didn't owe anybody anything. And I went to people that I trusted, like Adrienne Weiss.
- [31:22]
Guy Raz
Adrienne Weiss was somebody you knew from May, from the May World, yes.
- [31:26]
Maxine Clark
Well, I met her from one of the BET vendors we did business with. But ultimately we used her in May.
- [31:30]
Guy Raz
And she was a consultant. I think she helped you name the business, right?
- [31:33]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, yes, she did. Well, she was one of the people the name came from our advertising agency in Topeka for Payless. They helped me think of the name, but Adrienne loved it too. She did all the branding, the logo, the store design, and she knew people who built stores. She worked with a lot of it. So she introduced me to the person who actually designed my store, the architect. And then he introduced me to the people that could make the fixtures, who used to make fixtures for theme parks and for Mattel and all kinds of people. They sketched out what I wanted and it was exactly what I envisioned that children would want. And Pleasant Rowland, who was the founder of American Girls.
- [32:10]
Guy Raz
American Girl Dolls.
- [32:11]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, yeah. She and I were in a women's organization together and I went and talked to her and she was very helpful, even though she wasn't negative on the idea. She was negative on the idea that I thought boys would do it also. She says, we've had boy dolls and the girls buy them. So you know, your customer is going to be all girls. But in the end about it's at least 60, 40 now, girls and boys. And also, it wasn't as young as I thought it was going to be. Older kids really got into making it. And parents, adults got into making it too. Teenagers and older adults and college kids. Because the bear. The bear itself. A teddy bear. A bear is a symbol of, I think like 50% of the colleges in America have a. The mascot is a bear. Some crazy thing like that. It's a high number.
- [32:59]
Guy Raz
And did you. I mean, of course this is not like, you know, you weren't starting an automotive company. Right. It's not like the complexity is. But still, like, you had to figure out, okay, this is how it's going to be. The kid's going to come in and they're going to have these different options, and then they go here and then there's going to be a machine that's going to. They can watch their bear being stuffed. And like, you probably had to create that technology, so to speak. Right. Or was it just off the shelf? Could you just buy like a stuffing machine?
- [33:30]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, we did. We bought an upholstery stuffing machine and put a cover on it. That first one we made a bath. So it was choose me, stuff me, stitch me, fluff me. The fluffing machine was like. Looked like a bathtub. And it had an air. The nozzle that. Where water would come out of the bathtub and a brush that you would brush your bear and fluff up the fur.
- [33:51]
Guy Raz
And I should mention this kind of. There's this cool thing that you also did where kids could buy a heart and the heart would be sewn into the bear, which became kind of a trademark.
- [34:02]
Maxine Clark
It wasn't for sale. It was included in the.
- [34:03]
Guy Raz
Included in the bag.
- [34:05]
Maxine Clark
Right. And then we had Name Me, which was the Nameie Commuter. And that came actually from Katie, who, when she was on a vacation, she almost lost her bear, George, in the Avis bus. He was going around and around and. And I didn't want any child. I lost my teddy bear when I was 10 years old. I didn't want anybody to lose it. So we created this Find a bear ID system that went inside of every bear. And we could notify you if the bear was returned to us. We could open him up and scan the barcode and bring him back to you. And we did bring back about 10,000 prior to Covid, I think it was around 10,000 bears that we had found over the years and brought back to kids.
- [34:41]
Guy Raz
Yeah. And just for people who aren't familiar with it, it was going to be Almost like going to the car wash where you see your car going through the car. Like, the kids were gonna see the bear being made in front of their eyes. And at the end, they can name it and they can dress it. They get it.
- [34:58]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, that was the real novelty, was dressing of the bear. I didn't create any of this. I didn't invent any of these parts. I just brought the parts together, which is what a great merchant does. Like, Jeff Bezos didn't write the books. He just put the books together on a platform that you could. We all could buy a zillion books from, so. And Howard Schultz didn't invent coffee, and Ray Kroc didn't invent hamburgers. They just invented how to sell more of it. And that's exactly what I did.
- [35:25]
Guy Raz
All right, so you, you have everything in place. You've got a name, you've got this concept. And I think within nine months of when you first had the idea, you open the first store in St. Louis and it's going to be. Kids can go and basically build their stuffed animal bear, whatever it was going to be. And how did it do? Like, from the opening.
- [35:49]
Maxine Clark
It was phenomenal from the opening. We did as much business in the first quarter, October to December, as I thought we were going to do the whole year. The whole first year we were in business. The real clue was the day that we opened the store to the public. The Sunday night. We had a party on the Sunday night for all my friends and family, you know, people that came. And the next day I came to the store to open it up at 9 o' clock in the morning, and there was a line out the door. People had kept their children home from school to come to this opening. I couldn't believe it. I was actually in shock that people would keep their children home from school. But it was a very important indicator and we didn't have enough people planned for that morning. We had a few people I had to call over to the office, to my cfo, who was there, and my. My marketing person that was helping me. And when they all came over and we waited on customers, put your shirt on and get over here. We're coming. Your denim shirt. We've got customers waiting outside the door. And I heard people in. I was working the registers and I heard people saying, this is owned by Disney. This is a new Disney concept. This is Warner Bro. Warner Brothers still had a store in the mall? No, no, it's Warner Brothers. And we didn't have one Disney product or one Warner Brothers product in our store at the time. And I was afraid we were gonna sell out. I had bought enough merchandise to last till Easter because Chinese New Year comes in there and I bought enough merchandise, but I was afraid I was gonna run out.
- [37:10]
Guy Raz
Cause you were importing from China. You were importing from China.
- [37:14]
Maxine Clark
Yes, importing from China. And all those relationships, all those people I'd done business with before and May Company, they had made something for me. The shoe vendor that made our shoe vendors made shoes for Payless. Bears had shoes, now bears had underwear. Bears had dresses and jeans and T shirts and skates and all kinds of products that people had made those form those relationships. The resources that I had because of my 20 some years of May company history all paid off in ways I could not have imagined, including. The landlord of the Galleria gave me a 10 year lease at a very reasonable price because he too wanted to be the first store in the country to have this idea. And he knew that if it didn't work out, he could rent the space to somebody else.
- [37:58]
Guy Raz
Here's what I'm wondering about, right? Like if there were people waiting in line saying, oh, you know, this is the Disney, new Disney concept. It's the new Warner Brothers concept. It's actually a Maxine Clark concept. And it's not like it's trademarked. It's not like you could, I mean, yes, Bill debeart is trademarked, but the idea of opening a store where people could stuff an animal, like anybody in theory could just do, I mean, Disney in theory or Warner in theory could do that. So was there any concern, at least at the beginning that, you know, this could happen, some bigger company could come in, see your success and just basically replicate it?
- [38:42]
Maxine Clark
I was aware that that was possible, but I protected every single thing I could. I over legalize the company. I had a major investment in the law firm that represented our trademarks. And believe me, people did try to copy it. And we took them to court. It's not so much that you protect it, it's that you make sure that you can afford to protect it. And then also when we did leases with landlords, we signed exclusive agreements to be the only make your own stuffed animals store on the mall. Okay, I knew how to do that too. One thing we didn't talk about that I think is really integral to this story was there was a story written about Build a Bear in July before we opened our store, right. There was a story in the Business Journal. That reporter had seen the sign on the store and she Called me and she found out that who I was, when she realized who I was, she says, well, why would you do this? She had this big job. Why would you do this? And I said, well, I'm glad to come and talk to you about it. Come over to my office and we'll talk about it. She came over and I sat her next to stuffed animals. So she was a mother of three daughters. And I told her exactly what I'm telling you. And she wrote this story. And it was in the Friday issue of the Business journal. And about 11 o' clock that morning, I got a phone call from a person who I knew of in town, an entrepreneur. I knew of him, but I had never met him. His name was Barney Ebsworth. He owned a travel company, and he also owned cruise ships. And he said that he read the story in the paper and would I be willing to talk to him about his investing in my business. And I said, well, I'm not really looking for investors right now. He said, well, you know, let's just meet. I'm going away for the summer. Can you come over on Monday? I went over there on Monday with my bag of tricks, my business plan, the stuffed animals. Our connection was that he loved animals. His wife was involved with the World Wildlife foundation, and he had two gigantic English sheepdogs. He said, how much do you think you need for the next couple of years? And I said, you know, four or five million. He said, is next Thursday soon enough? And I said, I don't need it next Thursday, but I'd be open to talk to you about it. I didn't even have anything. I didn't have a private placement memorandum. I didn't have anything. But he said, I've never been to the mall. I'm not a mall guy. But I love animals and I love your spirit. And I run a company that prides itself on its customer experience. I want to help you create a great experience for your customers. And I want to make sure I want to ensure that you can continue to develop that over time, because people will try to cut costs and take that away from you. Trust me, I've been there. He said, so when you have people like that on your team that advocate for what you know is right, you know it's right.
- [41:16]
Guy Raz
Yeah, I know Barney. Barney's investment sort of yielded him about 20% stake in the company. And I asked you about how you protected your brand. But I do want to ask you about, you know, other people claiming that you took their idea, which I've Read all about. And I'll just say at the outset, I don't believe this is an idea that you can. You can't trademark a concept that is a kid goes somewhere, they build something and they walk out. You know, it could be a pottery. It could be ceramics. When about two years in, you yourself were sued by the owner of one of these factories that you actually made an offer for.
- [41:57]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, basic brown bear factory.
- [41:59]
Guy Raz
They basically claimed, hey, you learned all their trade secrets by going to visit. And your argument was, you know, not true. We, you know, we went and went to your factory on a tour, and that probably was a headache for some time. But eventually, I think about three years later, you did. You did settle that. It's still confidential, but it was settled.
- [42:23]
Maxine Clark
Right. And honestly, I did go there as a customer because it was an open tour that you could, you know, and I called them after the tour and said I'd be open to talk to you about buying your business. And they wanted an unbelievable amount of money for their little business. But they didn't think it would work, you know, Cause they had sewing machines. They really cut out patterns and sewed things. They thought what I was talking about was too streamlined. But it was open to the public. Anybody could go and see the business. Nothing about that was protected, but it wasn't that part of it because obviously there's many car manufacturers and many things. It was really the personal things that we did that nobody else had done that made it really special. That made it much more affordable as well, and accessible. That was really important to me for it to be accessible. Price point wise, fashion wise. They may regret what they did now. I don't regret it. I'm glad I offered them the money. I'm glad I went and did everything the legitimate way. But we ended up able to create our own company the way we wanted to create it, with the culture that we wanted to have.
- [43:21]
Guy Raz
Right. It would have been different had you ended up acquiring one of those factories. You mentioned that you opened the store in St. Louis in October of 1997. And I mean, it's kind of amazing. Within four months, you're doing like $400,000 in sales. And like, I think at the end of the first full year, that store did $2 million, which, just to put in perspective, the average mall store at that time, certainly a new store would do between 500 and 700,000 a year. So this Build a Bear store was like, it was going bonkers. And you had a plan, like in the business plan. I think you had this timeline for when you would open new stores. Right. Like, you would. It was like going to be one store, 97, and then another four stores
- [44:10]
Maxine Clark
in 98, three stores in 98, and that would bring us to four.
- [44:15]
Guy Raz
And you were already. You got this investment from Barney, and you had people starting to say, hey, can I invest? Because I imagine you need the cash, right? The cash flow alone from the business wasn't enough to expand. You do need outside investment to start building these out in other cities.
- [44:35]
Maxine Clark
The landlords, also in the retail business, when they want you, they pay for you to come there. And the only store. I think the only store we didn't get any money in was the Galleria. Our first one, the St. Louis Galleria, didn't give us any tenant allowance, but every store after that gave us something to build our store. They wanted us to come, and they wanted to be the first one in their market. So in Chicago, we had. The next two stores were in Chicago, and then the fourth store was in Kansas City. So we were on a roll there. And the landlords were the largest investors in Build a Bear.
- [45:05]
Guy Raz
But you were. I mean, basically the attraction was you were gonna bring kids to a mall, which means you're gonna bring parents to the mall, which means. And so I understand why they would want you there because. And sort of the 90s into the early 2000s was like a golden era for malls. I mean, we know that now, but I mean, at the time, we didn't. So they wanted you in there. And I think because you opened the first store in October of 97, by the end of 1999, so two years in, you've got 14 stores. So just imagine you were traveling all over the country all the time. 14 stores in two years. A lot of stores.
- [45:47]
Maxine Clark
Yeah. And they were the best malls in America at the time. And some of the toughest deals. It's not like they say, yes in a minute. You have to really negotiate, but you have to find the right location. And. And our real estate reps would not let us settle for a bad location.
- [46:02]
Guy Raz
Sometimes you open stores and they didn't work. So what did you learn about that? Why would you open a store somewhere and it would be just gangbusters, but another place didn't work.
- [46:14]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, really interesting. We wanted to put stores wherever people go to have fun, literally. And so we thought that every tourist location, you know, would be really good. Our first tourist location was Myrtle beach, and it was phenomenal. You know, outdoor mall, Broadway at the beach. The next year, we had to make it bigger, because we didn't have enough room for all the customers. But we also. The store that we closed was our store, number eight in Aventura Mall in Miami, which was a big mall. I thought it would be a great store for us because it was such a big store in Miami, in North Miami. And we did terrible there. I mean, was. It was just not good enough to keep, you know, to keep it open. And so we worked with the landlord to give it back. And we had another couple stores like that, like Sawgrass Mills, another big retail establishment, didn't do well there either because the people that came there from South America and Latin America that came on vacation brought their suitcases and wanted clothes. That's what they spent their time shopping for, clothes. So we learned that that wasn't necessarily the place for us. In fact, outlet malls now are more successful for us because we have a smaller store format to put in there or a pop up store that we can do when they're doing something great. But that wasn't necessarily the right place for a build a bear because we knew we'd already learned what wasn't working, you know, what parts of the mall were better for us. And if we were near a limited two store or children's place, we did way better than if we were near Nordstrom and no children's stores away. But you learn and you have to learn fast and you have to learn with your partners. And the landlords were very helpful to us. I mean, they were our partners all the way because they have a, you know, they're in debt to the banks too, and they want to make sure that they get the return on their investment. So they were very much partners of ours. And, well, I mean, we were growing a little. You know, we started to grow a little, maybe a little bit ahead of our heels when we bought the UK business in 2006, right before the recession.
- [48:06]
Guy Raz
You bought which business?
- [48:07]
Maxine Clark
The bear factory in the UK in
- [48:09]
Guy Raz
London, which was basically doing a version of what you were doing.
- [48:12]
Maxine Clark
Yes, yes. And we got wind of that because they were in our Oak Brook store in Chicago. And our store manager called us and she said, there's a person in here who's buying one of everything. What should I do? I said, sell it to him. And we tracked the transaction and we followed them. And it was owned by Hamley's. It was part of Hamley's and they were willing to sell it to us. And we learned so much from that transaction. In fact, we were thinking of looking for a franchisee to take it over. But in the first few weeks of owning that store, we got to know all the store people, and we started to put in some. In our stores, some of their habits that they had created for the London customer. We really did. It was great for us.
- [48:59]
Guy Raz
Okay, you're having profitable quarters virtually every quarter. Right. And you're expanding. And so now it's obvious that. I shouldn't say obvious. Nothing's obvious. But you take this public, you launch your IPO October 2004. It's like, what, seven years after you open that first store? You're 55. I mean, it's awesome. And, I mean, you raised $150 million in that IPO. It was a successful IPO, but now you're running a publicly traded company, which is a different. It's different. You've got your quarterly calls. You're dealing with shareholders. That's a different beast. That's running a completely different kind of operation.
- [49:45]
Maxine Clark
It was. But it was a really experience I didn't have, and it was part of the American dream to own a company on the New York Stock Exchange. For me, anyway, I really looked at that as a big dream. And we did a lot of things differently than other companies would do. We put pictures in our IPO documents. We gave teddy bears to all the traders on the floor. We did a lot of fun things that made people smile. They let us decorate the outside of the New York Stock Exchange. And I didn't take any money out of the company at that particular point. But our investors wanted out. We had taken on investors. Barney did not want to sell. Barney called me from the roadshow and said, I'm not selling. I don't want to sell. I want to be there with you through thick or thin. And I said, barney, we already sold it. We're oversold. We can't go backwards at this point. He was so disappointed. He just still wanted to stay 100% in. We were all just apportioned out of it. We all had to sell, and we had to pay back those original. Those venture capital people that we did take on that were phenomenal partners, by the way, and we still always controlled our own business to this day. We still run our own business. And we weren't merged into some other company and made cheaply or anything like that. We were able to still operate Build a Bear with the heart and soul of Build a Bear as it was intended.
- [50:59]
Guy Raz
Okay, so, you know, the brand has just been such a success, right? And we're like, you start in 97 you go public in 2004, and you hit 250 stores in 2007. 10 years in 250 stores, which I think was your original goal and your business plan. And then the financial crisis hits. And from what I've read and what I have heard, this was really the first serious test. I mean, it was like the stock price plunged. You start to see some losses in the business. Tell me about that period of time. I mean, I think at one point the stock price was down to $4, $4 and a half dollars or something.
- [51:44]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, I think it was a little bit later than that, but it did go down. We also had created two other concepts during this time. So we had friends to be made, which was make your own dolls that we had just a few stores of. And we also had invested in a concept called ride makers, which was make your own cars. Not stuffed cars, real cars, meaning like boys love, you know, plastic cars as model cars. And we had to pull out of those. Those endeavors because even though they could have been successful in the long haul, we couldn't focus on that. When we had the rest of the business was challenged by the economy. We had to tighten the ship. We decided not to open as many stores. We pulled back on the store openings that were planned for 8 and 9. We worked with our landlords. We went in and cut everything we could cut and renegotiated every lease we could renegotiate because they did not want us to leave. They wanted us to stay. They wanted us to be successful. And we used that time to really kind of rethink the store model. You know, what equipment did we need? Was the store needing to be refreshed? We knew it wasn't just us, but we also used that time to really dig into us and what could we do to be different? It was very hard. I thought that Christmas 08 was going to be really successful because who was going to not buy a teddy bear for their child? And that was one of the biggest mistakes I made. I should have realized sooner and let the people that we had to cut about 50, maybe 75 people, that I should have let them go earlier because it would have been easier for them to get a job than it was in January of 2009. It was very heartbreaking to me because some of those people were in our first people that we hired. And I really was mad at myself that I didn't realize I never made that mistake again. You know, when you see us, you see the train come and get out of the way.
- [53:38]
Guy Raz
Did you I mean, you're tightening up, you're renegotiating leases. Was there ever a moment during that time where, you know, you were worried about whether the business would make it through?
- [53:52]
Maxine Clark
No, I don't think I worried that we would make it through. I worried about how hard it would be to get through it.
- [53:59]
Guy Raz
When we come back in just a moment, Maxine steps away from the role of CEO and learns the delicate art of working with the next one. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built this. When it comes to your health and well being, the right care can change everything. That's why Cleveland Clinic has been elevating world class patient care for over a century. From the most specialized heart, neurology and cancer treatments to the latest surgical innovations and beyond, Cleveland Clinic is here for every care in the world. Whether you're exploring advanced care or just looking after your health, all the info you need is waiting for you@clevelandclinic.org when I meet a founder or someone pitches me an idea, one of the very first things I do is pull up their website. A great website is essential for any modern business. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know because it builds trust, it builds credibility, and it generates leads. And unlike social media, a website provides complete ownership. But if updates to your.com take too long or feel harder than they should be, Framer is the shortcut you've been looking for. Framer is a website builder that turns dot coms from a formality into a tool for growth, helping thousands of businesses from early stage Startups to Fortune 500s build better websites faster. Whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages, or migrate your full dot com, Framer has programs for every size of business to make going from idea to live site as easy as possible. Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a framer specialist or get started building for free. Today@framer.com BILT for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com BILT for thirty percent off framer.com BILT rules and restrictions may apply. Hey, welcome back to How I Built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2010, the end of the financial crisis. And to keep Build a Bear profitable, Maxine has cut costs and laid some people off. And then she starts to think about her own future.
- [56:27]
Maxine Clark
I remember I started the business when I was 48 years old. I wanted to stay till I was maybe 15 years at the maximum. And we were getting close to that mark because I had other things I wanted to do and not necessarily start a new business, but other things that. That I wanted to do and my husband as well, that we saw we could do here in St. Louis.
- [56:45]
Guy Raz
For St. Louis, you start to feel like, you know, maybe it's time for me to step aside. Obviously you still were going to be a part of the company, but you started to think that that's what you wanted to do.
- [56:59]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, and I had to get it back on track. We had to make some, you know, some decisions. We had to take some write downs, we had to do some things. We had to close that doll concept. We had to take out of our investment from the make your own cars. We had to do a lot of those things that I didn't want the next person to have to do that. I wanted to make sure that we did that. And also I had an internal person that I thought would be the person to take over the company, but that did not work out. So I stayed probably an extra year longer before we decided that we would now look for a new CEO. But that wasn't really that hard. I know people looked at me, they thought, you'll never leave. You'll never give it up, you'll never this. I wanted build a Bear to last as long as Disney has lasted longer. You know, like, I wanted to build something forever. Not for just my. It wasn't for my ego. It was forever for children and families to enjoy. But I had a great board. The board cared as much about the legacy of the company as I did. But they also cared about the fiscal. They knew I cared about the fiscal responsibility to the shareholders as much. And I was a large shareholder. I was a shareholder too. So I still had a lot of stock in the company. So it was a big deal to me and to what I wanted to do for St. Louis with that money. So it was very important to me that. That stay successful.
- [58:09]
Guy Raz
Okay, June 2013, you formally step down and you find a replacement. And we've done hundreds of episodes about this on the show where the founder leaves. A replacement comes in. Sometimes it works out, often it doesn't. And we've had stores like Clif Bar, they came back twice. Howard Schultz has had to come back a few times to write the ship. It's really hard when you're the founder CEO to find and trust somebody who can really steward the brand. A lot of it's luck, but a lot of it's good. Research. But a lot of it's luck. And you guys end up hiring a former executive from Hasbro, Sharon Price. John, this is in 2013, and I'm just going to kind of, you know, reveal the plot twist here, which is she is still the CEO today.
- [59:00]
Maxine Clark
Yes. 13.
- [59:02]
Guy Raz
So clearly it worked out.
- [59:03]
Maxine Clark
Yes. She just announced her retirement.
- [59:06]
Guy Raz
I mean, it's amazing. So when she took over your baby, be honest, like, how much did you step back and say, hey, it's yours. Ball's in your court. You go for it, or did you continue to kind of, you know, weigh in?
- [59:22]
Maxine Clark
A little bit at first, but I realized that she was on the right track, and I, you know, I had an office at the office, and I decided I didn't really want to go there. I didn't need to go there every day. I didn't need to be there. She and I were in contact with each other appropriately, and we had. We developed this rapport that was to. I say to be a friend. Today. We're friends. We have a great relationship. She also was in the shoe business. She was the president of Stride Right Shoes. Right before she came to build a bear. And that was something we had in common. We had a lot of similar experiences. We just developed the right relationship. And I trusted her, and she trusted me that I wasn't going to be complaining all the time, oh, you change this or you change that or why are you doing this? Or I didn't do that.
- [60:03]
Guy Raz
How did you make sure you didn't do that? Because that's a natural human instinct, you know, like, when it's yours. Right. Or when you start it. And so how did you keep yourself disciplined by not doing that?
- [60:15]
Maxine Clark
Well, she's smart, and I knew she was smart, and I knew she cared about the. The brand, and I wanted to trust her. Some things worked and some things didn't. One of the things that she had to learn was some of the, you know, at first, one of the things I was saying was, you know, we tried that, and it didn't really work, but maybe your version of it will work. There was things she decided to do that I didn't really like, but they turned out fine. And I learned from that process. Yeah, that was such an important part of my being a founder, was so I can inspire other founders from what I learned from. From my successor. Next to founding a company and coming up with an idea, the next most important thing is to make sure that you have somebody who can succeed you that can do better than you did.
- [60:56]
Guy Raz
Yeah. And I should Mention. I mean, she has successfully taken the mantle. Right. I mean, today, I think she got the company back to profitability in 2017. Today, Build a Bear does well over $500 million in revenue. All kinds of interesting collaborations. I remember this with my kids when the Star wars collaborations, that's when they got their first Build A Bears, you know, back 2014, 2015. What's impressive about it, both of you, obviously, both as operators, is, again, maybe a lot of people would have said, no, no, this is gonna be an enduring generational business. But I wouldn't have. I don't think I would have said that.
- [61:35]
Maxine Clark
Yeah, no, I think, like I said, you write the business plan, the first person you have to convince is yourself. But I did think that this had potential, national and international potential, because of the partnerships that we wrote into our business plan that we wanted to build with Major League Sports, with hello Kitty, with Disney, all of those things came to pass. And Sharon, before Sharon, and then Sharon actually even enlarged them. And Sharon added on the entertainment that we created. We started to create our own characters around Holiday, and she took that to another level.
- [62:06]
Guy Raz
Yeah.
- [62:07]
Maxine Clark
And then we hit the COVID was her come to Jesus moment. I mean, that was really hard enough for any CEO. So no matter how much was growing, that was a leveling moment.
- [62:17]
Guy Raz
Yeah. I read revenue fell 45% in the first quarter of that year.
- [62:22]
Maxine Clark
It's awful. But we were both fearful of losing an iconic business. She had her moments of being fearful of that, and I had my moments of being fearful of that. And the kind of people we are, we weren't gonna let that happen for our employees, for our shareholders, who are sometimes the same people for our mall developers. This was something that we both believed in.
- [62:42]
Guy Raz
All right. I read a really interesting analysis by a business school professor from the University of Georgia. It was really a couple years ago. And his theory about one. Not theory, but one of the reasons he points out why Build a Bear has been a successful business. Because again, it could have been just a hype product or it could have been. Kids are fickle. We know that. We've done kids brands on the show. But his argument is that it's because the customers are involved in the process, that it creates higher passion for the product. That basically you build brand loyalty by giving the customers a unique experience. Today, every company wants people to be posting their shirts on Instagram and, hey, you know, hashtag us. And all this stuff. You guys were doing this before that was even a thing. Right? People were. They were part of the. Of the product like they're like it's a memory for life. And you've got them.
- [63:44]
Maxine Clark
Yes. And our bears go to college with them and go to, they're passed on to their own children. You're building something more than just a toy that you can, you know, give away to the goodwill. You're building goodwill. This is part of our culture and I think that that's what we do. That is the authentic. It's authentic. It's not fake.
- [64:02]
Guy Raz
You know, I know that when you step down, of course we're still very much involved and clearly are still involved. But you started to focus on philanthropic endeavors. I know that one of the things you do is you invest in women owned businesses and start startups. Is that where you see your work continuing over the next decades?
- [64:25]
Maxine Clark
Yes, it is joyful work. It is not. It's not the same kind of control that you have when you're running your own company. I invest in women and minority entrepreneurs. And again, commitment to the time it takes to build a brand and to build success is something that's hard to teach if it's their first job out of college and you instead of having the experience that you can't really pass on to them. But some of these things are really, really working and are doing great. And I'm so proud of them. And it gives me great joy to be able to be a part of the changes in St. Louis that we need which involve those young people, but also seeing in St. Louis what we can do when we all work together. And I'm a cheerleader for that. But I'm not alone doing it. There are a lot of other people in it with me.
- [65:09]
Guy Raz
Yeah. When you think about this arc, right, you started out moving to Washington D.C. to be a lawyer. And turns out that by happenstance you end up meeting this guy. You work for Hex and then you get promoted. You go to May and then you are there and you move to St. Louis and that becomes your home. And then you are at Payless and then you decide to start this. You have this very unusual idea to start a stuffed, stuffed animal, build your own stuffed animal brand. That is a little quirky but clearly had legs. And here we are today, have over half a billion dollars in sales. When you think about that journey and where you got to, you know, you're, you're wealthy and all these things, I mean, how much of this do you attribute to all the work you put in and all the, you know, grind and how much do you think had to do with luck getting lucky.
- [66:07]
Maxine Clark
It's a 5050 deal for sure. It's being in the right place at the right time and making the most of that experience. Whether it's asking the right questions, asking questions when nobody else will, but you have them and you need the answers. I actually had great examples of people bringing me to the table and seeing how those people think. It was a shared investment, and I invested in myself, they invested in me. It's everything. My husband was also incredibly supportive of my career, and that is also part of the pie. But you make your own luck. Like there's many times that I didn't want to. I was on my way to something and I said, why am I going to this? I'm so tired. And I left there saying, I'm so glad. I went, look who I met here. Look who I talked to today. And so I remind myself of that every time I'm too tired to go someplace. I think, no, I'm going to walk away with something more than I think when I leave. And almost always that happens. And I think a lot of people just talk themselves out of doing that and they miss some great opportunities. They don't take the luck far enough. And I think I've taken it to the max and I feel really good about that.
- [67:11]
Guy Raz
That's Maxine Clark, founder of Build a Bear. By the way, not everyone who walks into a Build A Bear leaves with a stuffed animal. Some adults go there to just for the clothes. And no, they're not buying them for themselves, they're buying them for their dogs. In fact, a Build A Bear subreddit says popular options are the Star wars outfits, particularly the Jedi Knight tunic, which, at least in the photos I've seen, looks pretty great on a Chihuahua. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the Follow button on your podcast app so you never miss miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. And if you're interested in insights, ideas and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please sign up for my newsletter@guyraz.com or on substack. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant, with research by Romel Wood. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes Alex Alex Chung, Karla estevez, Casey Herman, J.C. howard, Chris Masini, Sam Paulson, Kathryn Cipher, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I built this.