Kip Tindell, chief executive of the Container Store, is sitting on a stool in a Build-a-Bear Workshop in Dallas, trying to affix the limp carcass of a monkey doll onto a metal pipe attached to what looks like a giant cotton-candy machine. Around the same time, Maxine Clark, chief executive of Build-a-Bear, is wearing a red apron and trying to convince a customer at the Container Store in St. Louis that it's okay to give store-bought cupcakes as a gift to her boss as long as they come in a pretty box.
Cute sells: Stuffed animals are a $1.5 billion industry in the U.S. Commanding nearly a third of that market is Build-a-Bear Workshop, a St. Louis-based retailer that lets customers personalize plush teddies, bunnies and other fuzzy friends. Founder Maxine Clark got the idea for the company in the mid-1990s while toy shopping with a 10-year-old girl who suggested that she and Clark could make their own stuffed animals.
For a heady dose of holiday spirit, dive into Opryland.
America's bloated retail landscape is about to shrink some more.
Fortune: Mall Star Analystupdated: Tue Feb 28 2006 12:43:00
It's a Tuesday morning in early February, and Bob Buchanan, dressed casually but expensively (black Prada shoes from Barneys, corduroy pants from Neiman Marcus, a Saks T-shirt), is exploring The We...
A furniture company, a value-priced collegiate clothier and a fast-food chain that's popular for its ButterBurgers are on a short list of hot retail concepts that observers say could soon make a run on Wall Street.
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