YouSaid · the spoken record

Maxine Clark

lines on the record: 79
first: 2026-06-15
most recent: 2026-06-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a 50 50 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 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 how 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 or for Hecht's 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 animal, build your own stuffed animal brand that is a little quirky but clearly had legs and here we are today over half a billion dollars in sales. When you think about that journey and where you got to, you're wealthy and all these things. How much of this do you attribute to all the work you put in and all the grind and how much do you think had to do with luck getting lucky?”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. It is joyful work. It's not the same kind of control that you have when you're running your own company. I invested women and minority entrepreneurs. And again, commitment to the time it takes to build a brand and to build successes is something that's hard to teach if it's their first job out of college 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. It with me”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 give away to the goodwill. You're building goodwill. This is part of our culture. And I think that... That's what we do. It's authentic. It's not fake”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 going to 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, she's smart, and I knew she was smart, and I knew she cared about 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, 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 were things she decided to do that I didn't really like, but they turned out fine. And I learned from that process. Was such an important part of my being a founder so I could inspire other founders from what I learned 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A little bit at first, but I realized that she was on the right track, and 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 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 Bilder. 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. You changed this or you change that? Why are you doing this? I didn't do that.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cared as much about the legacy of the company as I did. But they also cared about the fist. They knew I cared about the responsibility to the shareholders as much. And I was a large shareholder. I was a shareholder too. So, you know, I still had a lot of stock in the company. So it was a big deal to me and to the, what I wanted to do for St. Louis with that money. So it was very important to me that that stay successful.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I had to get it back on track. We had to make 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. And 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 I would 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 I wanted to do and my husband as well that we saw we could do here in St. Louis for St. Louis.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was very heartbreaking to me because some of those people were in our first people that we hired. I really was mad at myself that I didn't realize I never made that.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To leave. They wanted us to stay. They wanted us to be successful. And we use that time to really kind of rethink the store model. 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, 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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 eight and nine. 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so the brand has just been such a success, right? And we're like, you start 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 in 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. At one point, the stock price was down to $4, $4.5 or something.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cheaply or anything like that, we were able to still operate Build a Bear with the heart and soul of Bilderbear as it was intended”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes, and we got wind of that because they were in our Oakbrook 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 track the transaction and we followed them. And it was owned by Hamley's 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Helpful to us. I mean, they were our partners all the way because they have 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 maybe a little bit ahead of our heels when we bought the UK business in 2006, right before the recession.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 to 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...”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's really interesting. We wanted to put stores wherever people go to have fun, literally. And so we thought that every tourist location 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 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 and North Miami. And we did terrible there. I mean, it was just not good enough 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”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they were the best malls in America at the time. And some of the toughest deals, you know, we had, it's not like they say yes in a minute. You have to really negotiate, but you have to find the right location. And our real estate reps would not let us settle for a bad location.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Bilder.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it wasn't that part of it. Because obviously there's many car manufacturers and many of the 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 in a 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 because 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They basically claimed, hey, you learned all their trade secrets by going to visit. And your argument was not true. We 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 settle that. It's still confidential, but it was settled.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I said, well, I'm not really looking for investors right now. He said, well, 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. And 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 this story in the paper, and would I be willing to talk to him about his investing in my business?”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was aware that that was possible, but I protected every single thing I could. I over legalized the company. I had a major investment in the law firm that was 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. 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 Bildebert in July before we opened our store. Right.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, importing from China. And all those relationships, all those people, I'd done business with before. May Company. They had made something for me, the shoe vendor that made our shoe vendors made shoes for pay less. 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 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we didn't have one Disney product or one Warner Bros. product in our store at the time. I was afraid we were going to sell out. I had bought enough merchandise to last till Easter because Chinese New Year comes in there and I'd bought enough merchandise, but I was afraid I was going to run out.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. You know, we had a few people. I had to call over to the office to my CFO who was there and my marketing person that was helping me. And they all came over and we waited on customers. I said, 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, I was working the registers. And I heard people saying, this is owned by Disney. This is a new Disney concept. This is Warner Brothers still had a store in the mall. No, no, it's Warner Brothers.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They get it. 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. Jeff Bezos didn't write the books. He just put the books together on a platform that we all could buy a zillion books from. And Howard Schultz didn't invent coffee and Ray Crockton invent hamburgers. They just invented how to sell more of it. And that's exactly what I did.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And just so 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 wash. Like the kids were going to 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then we had Name Me, which was the Name Me 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 round. 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did. We bought an upholstery stuffing machine and put a cover on it. That first one. We made a bath me, stuff me. Stitch me, fluff me, the fluffing machine was like look 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 said, 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 that and parents, adults got into making it, two 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 the mascot as a bear, some crazy thing like that. It's a high number.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yes, she did. Well, she was one of the people. The name came from our advertising agency in Topeka for payloads. They helped me think of the name. But Adrian loved it too. She did all the branding, the logo, the store design. And she knew people who built stores because 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 it went bust, it went bust. That was it. I didn't have any investors at that moment in time. And I didn't owe anybody anything. And I went to people that I trusted, like Adrian Weiss.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The kid and me 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. I was building a store that was a theme park and 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. Mall of America, they had that big Snoopy village. 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 10 year business plan. And I had a lot of friends in the shopping center business because pay less had stores and shopping centers. My office was right next to the shopping center people at May Company. I went to the ICSC.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it grew on them. So just sort of an example. When I went to a 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 the 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 to notice before. And I think that it was really an interesting thing because, you know, Ralph Lauren has teddy bears on, that was the time of his teddy bear moment. And so people are starting to say, maybe this is something, there's something to this, even though...”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was going to 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 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.”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. It would be maybe a better faster way to get where I wanted to go. They were wrong about that, but that's what they, so I was investigating that”
2026-06-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Build-A-Bear: Maxine Clark. A Former Shoe Executive Launches a Stuffed Animal Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT