Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire
Maxine Clark, former president of Payless ShoeSource, shares how a child's offhand comment about Beanie Babies inspired her to create Build-A-Bear Workshop in 1997. Despite widespread skepticism, she leveraged her 25-year retail career to build a global stuffed animal empire that grew to over 500 million dollars in annual sales. The episode traces her journey from a serendipitous entry into retail to founding and eventually stepping away from one of America's most recognizable experiential retail brands.
Summary
Maxine Clark grew up in Coral Gables, Florida, shaped by a mother who had worked closely with Eleanor Roosevelt and was deeply committed to social justice. Her mother ran a school for children with Down syndrome and took Maxine to march in Selma, Alabama at age 16, experiences that instilled lifelong values around advocacy and community. Clark originally planned to become a civil rights lawyer, moving to Washington D.C. after studying journalism at the University of Georgia, but a chance encounter with the president of the Hecht Company department store division led to an unexpected career in retail. She was hired on the spot after impressing Alan Blustein in an impromptu conversation, launching a career she had never anticipated.
Clark rose steadily through the May Department Stores Company over more than two decades, learning merchandising, acquisitions, marketing, and retail operations. A key early insight came when she analyzed credit card purchase data to understand cross-category buying behavior, creating a co-op catalog that sold out over a single weekend. She eventually became president of Payless ShoeSource, one of the largest divisions of a Fortune 500 company, overseeing 4,500 stores and approximately $2.5 billion in revenue. However, she grew increasingly frustrated by the bureaucracy and distance from customers, and recognized that the May Company was falling behind technologically and strategically.
In 1996, Clark left Payless with savings and a vague intention to start something new, specifically focused on children's retail experiences. Her conviction was that technology would erode traditional retail for kids and she wanted to preserve hands-on, memorable experiences. The idea for Build-A-Bear crystallized when her neighbor's daughter Katie, disappointed that a toy store was sold out of Beanie Babies, suggested they could just make their own. Clark heard something bigger in that comment: a miniature factory experience, Willy Wonka-style, where children could stuff, name, and dress their own animals in a mall setting.
Clark developed a detailed ten-year business plan, enlisted brand consultant Adrienne Weiss, and leveraged relationships from her May Company years to secure factory contacts, fixture manufacturers, and mall landlords. She secured early investment from entrepreneur Barney Ebsworth after a local business journal article ran about her concept. The first Build-A-Bear store opened in St. Louis's Galleria in October 1997 to overwhelming demand, generating in its first quarter what Clark had projected for the entire first year. Within two years there were 14 stores, and by 2007, the company had hit 250 stores — her original business plan target.
Build-A-Bear went public on the New York Stock Exchange in October 2004, raising $150 million. Clark described the IPO as part of her personal American Dream, noting she decorated the exterior of the NYSE and gave teddy bears to floor traders. The 2008 financial crisis presented the company's first serious challenge, forcing layoffs, store closure deferrals, lease renegotiations, and the unwinding of two spinoff concepts — a make-your-own-doll concept and a make-your-own-cars concept. Clark expressed regret at not cutting staff earlier, as the delay made it harder for those employees to find new jobs.
In 2013, Clark stepped down as CEO, deliberately choosing to hand over leadership to allow the brand to outlast her tenure. She hired Sharon Price John, a former Hasbro and Stride Right executive, who has remained CEO for over 13 years and has since expanded revenue beyond $500 million annually, deepened entertainment and licensing partnerships, and navigated the company through COVID-19. Clark describes their relationship as a friendship built on mutual trust, noting she consciously resisted the urge to second-guess her successor's decisions.
In her post-CEO years, Clark has focused on investing in women- and minority-owned startups in St. Louis, describing it as joyful work. She reflects that success was roughly a 50-50 combination of hard work and luck, with the key being showing up even when tired, asking questions others wouldn't, and making the most of unexpected encounters — a philosophy evident throughout her entire career.
Key Insights
- Clark argues that the Build-A-Bear idea was not truly invented from scratch but was an act of assembling existing parts — stuffing machines, clothing vendors, factory tour models — into a coherent customer experience, comparing herself to Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz, and Ray Kroc as people who innovated in distribution rather than invention.
- Clark claims the concept was validated almost instantly: the first store did as much business in its opening quarter as she had projected for the entire first year, and parents kept children home from school to attend the opening day.
- Clark says she protected Build-A-Bear not primarily through patents but through legal trademark enforcement and exclusive lease clauses that prevented competing make-your-own-stuffed-animal concepts from operating in the same malls.
- Clark argues that her 25-year career at May Company was not just background but a direct operational asset — shoe vendors from Payless made bear shoes, clothing contacts made bear outfits, and mall relationships secured favorable leases and tenant improvement allowances that effectively made landlords the company's largest investors.
- Clark contends that her biggest mistake during the 2008 financial crisis was assuming parents would always buy teddy bears for their children no matter the economy, which led her to delay layoffs and ultimately made it harder for those employees to find new jobs when she finally acted.
- Clark says she stayed out of her successor's decisions by choosing not to maintain a daily office presence and by recognizing that Sharon Price John was capable and trustworthy — actively suppressing the founder's instinct to critique changes, viewing this discipline as one of the most important things a founder can do.
- Clark argues that a job where your results are measurable and attributable to you personally is a critical career advantage, citing how her early catalog success at Hecht's was visible and drew attention from senior leadership.
- Clark claims that her mother's connection to Eleanor Roosevelt — specifically Roosevelt's directive to her staff to go home and improve the lives of children and families they had witnessed suffering — directly shaped her mother's life work running a school for children with Down syndrome, and indirectly shaped Clark's own values.
- Clark argues that the longevity of Build-A-Bear is rooted in the fact that customers are participants in creating the product, making the bear a permanent memory rather than a disposable toy — a form of emotional engagement she says she was engineering before social media made participatory branding mainstream.
- Clark says she identified that Build-A-Bear performed poorly in outlet and fashion-destination malls like Sawgrass Mills and Aventura because the shoppers there were seeking apparel, not experiences, and that proximity to children's retail neighbors like Limited Too significantly boosted store performance.
- Clark claims that the acquisition of the UK's Bear Factory in 2006 — which she tracked after a store manager noticed someone buying one of everything — unexpectedly became a source of operational innovation, with UK store habits being imported back into American locations.
- Clark argues that luck and hard work are roughly equal contributors to her success, but that the key differentiator is consistently showing up to situations even when fatigued, because she says almost every time she forced herself to attend an event or meeting she had considered skipping, she left with something valuable.
Topics
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