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

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So 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. Maybe they are for sale. Maybe you could buy the factories”
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 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 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? A small way, something Disney esque at a mall in America. Could we do this?”
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, 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, although they were brands from May Company, and I called my friend Adrian Weiss, who was 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 I would want if I was this child walking into the store because I loved stuffed animals. My teddy bear”
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 knew 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 listened to her and I could see it because I'd been in factories. I knew exactly what it was going to 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 came upstairs and I was at the computer. She said, 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. Maybe we could do 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 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 do stuff. But I heard something different. The light bulb went on. And that was the day that the idea of her Build a Bear workshop was born. I knew that kids love field trips. They love knowing how things are 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
“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? And Immersed myself with my French kids to kind of get their point of view. One day I picked Katie and Jack up my next door neighbors up from school. And we went looking, they wanted to stop in a store that had beanie babies, if you remember the beanie baby craz”
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, 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 this story and would say, hi, John, how are you? When you walked over to the book department, it would say, did you enjoy Harry Potter?”
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 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 going to 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.”
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
“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 vendors, knew how to do a lot of things I never 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.”
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 May Company was not a forerunner. They were not out in 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. 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 pay less public. And I did not want to be the CEO of PayLess in Topeka, Kansas the rest of my life. I decided that I would take my money and I would go back home and I would figure out my next step.”
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 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.”
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
“That we're between our distribution center that was in Topeka and Payless are a lot of people that work 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.”
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 may be the president of Payla Shoe 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.”
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 at this point, I'm pretty high up in the chain of a division and probably on a track to go run a big division someday. And that division became pay less shoes eventually when... 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 pay less. 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. Palos was the largest division of made apartment stores.”
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 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 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.”
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 you're clearly on the up and up at hex. In 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 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?”
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, 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 a real telephones. They said, you're in trouble. And I said, what do you mean? I'm in trouble. They 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. 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 I was in a position where those results were catching attention.”
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 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 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.”
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
“That's what I was focused on. 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 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 went with it? And one of the good things at that time was that every department store had its own credit card.”
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 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.”
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 an executive trainee to be an assisted 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. And all the people that he sold to that sold to him 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. I learned so much from that scary, very scary nine months of time that was basically just pulling things out of a hat. My gut was my gut instincts that were leading 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
“The heck company was just coming into its own. Alan Blustein, 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 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.”
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 I lucked out on that because when I walked into the store, it wasn't as fancy as Woodward and Lothrip or Garfinkles. And I wasn't a fancy person. I thought I could really help because 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 did not have a lot of money to do it with.”
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 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 person. 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.”
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, I got a job at the executive training program 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. It's like 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, 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 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 heavy set, and he sits down at our table and he introduces himself as Alan Bluesteen. 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.”
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, 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 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.”
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 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. 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.”
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
“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. Wow. 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.”
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
“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 buildabear store in Saint Louis in late nineteen ninety seven, and within five years, Bildabear had one hundred stores and malls across America. Over the next twenty years, as shopping malls went into decline, Bildabear 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 the”
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