Yahoo Finance

What inspired me for this interview, so I'm scrolling Instagram around, I guess Valentine's Day, and I see in your account something called the Cougar Bear. February 3rd post, quote, she's on the prowl. This cuddly cougar is in her prime and looking for a good time. My first thought was, what the hell is this? I sent it to my friend, like, you just double check Build-A-Bear's account. Make sure I wasn't hacked, like I've never seen this before. Like where did this even come from?

So, we again back to this

This was a bear, it was wearing like a robe like a leopard robe, and I wrote it down, my sparkly shirt and a I guess a pair of like nice looking shoes. I'm like, what? What is this?

Well, you can get that most any time, you can go in and get, you know, really cute coat and sparkly shoes inside of a Build-A-Bear. But um this is a part of a strategy that again, it's all about the expansion of the brand. Like, so when I came to Build-A-Bear, one of our tenants was, we can be so much more than we are. We literally started as a mall-based retailer for kids, right? That happened to be an experience to make a stuffed animal. That's it, that's all we were, and in many ways when I got there, that's still all we were. The truth of the matter is, malls have changed, consumers have changed, the the digital economy was coming and we had to deal with that, right? It was almost an existential crisis. If malls are or if malls are contracting, and e-commerce, which is not an experience, is going to be as big or bigger than traditional retail, which is some of the discussions at the time. It's settled a little bit now. We have to figure out how to operate in the digital economy and we have to figure out how to be more. We were also becoming multi-generational at that very point. So again, being flexible, looking at the opportunities. So I'm going to get to this in a second, you're going to understand what I'm doing. Are you tracking with me?

I'm loving this, this is great, this is great.

So, the idea that I brought to the team, well, first we had to fix a lot of the financials. We were just unprofitable, so do that. There's a lot of levers you can pull if you're a change agent, which I've been on brands and business units for years. So we did that. But it's about the future, right? It's not just about the now, when you come in as a change agent. You have to set yourself up for what's next. The what's next was this idea of more. So, we Build-A-Bear has 250 million heart ceremonies over the last 25 plus years.

With the hearts sewn into the bear.

Well, just yes, the heart, you make a wish on it, it's a very emotional experience that has packed so much love, memories, friendship, experience. People can tell you everything about the first time they got a Build-A-Bear. They can tell you everything about the last time they went to get a Build-A-Bear. It's really remarkable. So, that kind of equity is incredibly monetizable if you have an infrastructure to access it. So that was what we were doing, more consumers, more types of product. Also, our mini beans, another type of product outside of the the make your own stuffed, like that little guy right there, this little fellow is a mini bean, matching mini bean. Also about 10.

Sure.

Very friend.

Mhm.

All right, that's myself.

That's really good.

And and so and then we could also be in different categories. So we needed to pivot from this retailer, right? That happened could accidentally create a brand, to a branded intellectual property company that happens to have vertical retail, profitable vertical retail as one of its revenue streams. Profitable vertical retail throws off a lot of cash. So we built out an entirely new infrastructure on on the web, but we didn't want to cannibalize our business, so we went after the multi-generational consumer. And that's where that 40% over indexes of teens and adults. And we created something called the Bear Cave, a micro site that is age gated, so we can put kind of fun, our interpretations, completely benign interpretations of licenses and movies like Matrix Bear, Deadpool Bear, but you wouldn't want to see that in a Build-A-Bear because the movies not rated appropriately. But the bear's fine, and that's the same thing here, and people think it's hilarious.

Okay.

So, uh real quick friends, uh you know who you are out there because you asked me to ask Sharon this.

She created the cougar bear. All right, that's how.

No, no I did not. I personally did not. We have a fabulous group of designers.

Did not, but like this is how, this is how it came to be, uh and it is in fact a real thing. Um Sharon Price John, it was good to catch up with you, it's been, it's been too long. Uh Build-A-Bear CEO, uh keep on rocking over there.

Thank you.

Thanks so much, Brian.