The Exchanges

Q sounds like she was very into social justice and was probably a very committed sort of New Deal Democrat. I imagine she probably worshipped the Roosevelt's, right? You know, you're growing up in the sixties. 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?

A 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, uh, 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.

AI assessment note: “Yes. When I was 16, my mother, we went on the bus from Miami to Selma”

Q journalism at the University of Georgia in the 19 sixties, 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 your, 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?

A Yes. I got a job at the executive training program at the, At Heck 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 two o'clock, whatever time it was. I did not have an interview at two o'clock, but they would see if somebody would meet with me. And Stanley Montt 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, into the restaurant, and it was empty. It was after lunch, around two o'clock, and, um, a man comes in, a bald-headed man, kind of, uh, heavyset, and he sits down at our table, and he introduces himself as Alan Blustein, and he said, hi, I'm Alan Blustein. What's your name? And I told him my name, and he said, tell me about yourself. And I told him about myself, and, um, 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 a 150 dollars more a month than you paid the last person. And so I had a job. I think part of it was that I wasn't afraid, I wasn't on an interview. I was just talking to a nice man. I did not know…

AI assessment note: “I got a job at the executive training program at the, At Heck Company”

Q And she was a consultant. I think she helped you name the business, right?

A 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. We, she, she did all the branding, the logo, the The store design. And she knew people who built stores. She, cause 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 Roland, who was the founder of, of American Girl.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Yes, she did. Well, she was one of the people.”

Q 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, it didn't work.

A 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 is 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, it 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 were 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, 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 w…

AI assessment note: “Didn't do well there either, because the people that came there... wanted clothes.”

Q in St. Louis, which is their headquarters, and that, I mean, that must have been exciting, because, I mean, now you're gonna be, I mean, this, you know, this looks like it's a career, right? I mean, it, I mean, it seems like, You would 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?

A I definitely loved it. Mostly, I worked for the CEO of the company, and I got to travel all around to all 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, um, I kept getting promoted to one of the divisions. I got, 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 an affordable price points. And that was where I met my husband, because my husband worked at that division. And then At this point, it, I'm pretty high up in the, in the chain of a division, and probably on a track to go run a big division, uh, someday, and that division became Payless Shoes eventually, when, about 10 years later, and I got passed over a few times for, uh, a department store, for venture stores, but the job that was meant for me was Payless. That was the j…

AI assessment note: “I definitely loved it. Mostly, I worked for the CEO of the company”

Q So tell me, just, what were some of the ideas that you initially were thinking of?

A 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, they had a, uh, a membership card. They were a member in the store. It 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 COPA and all these, you know, 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? Yeah. 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, 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.

AI assessment note: “we would create a store that might be a super-duper learning store”

Q I mean, it's amazing. So, so when, when she took over your baby, be honest, like how much did you step back and say, hey, it's yours, you balls in your court, you go for it. Or did you continue to kind of, you know, weigh in?

A A little bit at first, but I realized that she was on the right track, and, um, 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, um, 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 changed this, or you changed that, or why are you doing this? I didn't do that.

AI assessment note: “A little bit at first, but I realized that she was on the right track”

Q So you, you're really excited about this, and tell me, like, what you do. What, what?

A 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, um, I had a lot of experience in building brands, although they were brands for me, company, And I called my friend Adrienne Weiss, who was a 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 teddy 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 friend, 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 W…

AI assessment note: “I started to look whether it existed, whether there was a factory in America”

Q build a bear is trademarked, but the, but the idea of opening a store where people could stuff an animal, like anybody in theory could just 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, you, this could happen, some bigger company could come in, see your success, and just rep, basically replicate it?

A I was aware that that was possible, but I protected every single thing I could. I over-legalized the company. I, I had, uh, a major investment in the law firm that was represented our trademarks, and believe me, people did try to copy it, and we, 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-animal store. 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.

AI assessment note: “I was aware that that was possible, but I protected every single thing I could.”