Build-A-Bear Workshop

Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. is an American retailer headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri that sells teddy bears, stuffed animals, and characters. During store visits, customers go through an interactive process where the stuffed animal of their choice is assembled and tailored to their own preferences including varying scents, sounds, looks, and outfits. Build-A-Bear Workshop is the largest chain that operates in this style. The company's slogan was "Where Best Friends Are Made" from 1997–2013 when it was changed to "The Most Fun You'll Ever Make" from 2013 to 2024. With a rebrand in mid-2024, bears are now made with "The Stuff You Love". In 2013, Sharon Price John became the company's president/CEO.

In the mid-1990s, Maxine Clark resigned as president of Payless ShoeSource and started a string of retail stores with interactive experiences similar to her childhood of various events held at department stores. She went to toy factories and children's retail stores looking for ideas. She drew up three plans, then presented them to a panel of children. The build-a-bear concept was selected from the three, as the children were excited about it, and the stuffed animals offered a high-profit margin. Doll shops (known as Build-A-Doll) were also a part of the original business plan.

Clark founded Build-A-Bear in 1997. In 1997, Clark also offered to purchase Basic Brown Bears, which has been operating since 1985 in the do-it-yourself stuffed animals space. Adrienne Weiss Co. of Los Angeles was hired to develop the concept. Clark wanted to expand the store into a chain from the beginning, expecting to open three to five stores in 1998, and six to ten stores in 1999, to have 100 stores within five years. She opened the first store in the Saint Louis Galleria in Richmond Heights, Missouri. The first year's sales at $377,600 were above projections.

With store opening costs of $500,000 to $700,000 and estimated per-store sales at $2 million, Clark quickly found capital firms to invest in for the expansions. Kansas City Equity Partners invested to allow her to open its second store in August 1998 in Overland Park, Kansas. Windsor Capital injected $4.5 million into the company, which allowed for two Chicago area stores to open. With the four stores opened in 1998, the chain had $3.3 million in sales.

In 1999, Walnut Capital Partners invested $5 million for expansion, which consisted of opening stores in major cities to bring the chain to 14 stores. The stores were doubling the national mall averages of $350 sales per square foot. The same year, the Workshop sent out legal letters with threats of federal lawsuits regarding supposed violations of its trademarks and copyrights to its competitors Vermont Teddy Bear Co. Inc. and Basic Brown Bears Inc. With Friends 2B Made, the name was similar to Build-A-Bear's slogan "Where best friends are made"; the Workshop demanded that the company stop selling stuffed animals, recall its merchandise, and turn over its customer database and its proceeds. Vermont Teddy Bears had only two out of its three retail locations doing stuffed bears but had closed them down as being too expensive and stepping on its Bear-Gram program. Basic Brown Bears countersued, with the owners believing that Build-A-Bear swiped its information that was under a confidential disclosure agreement when Clark attempted to purchase the company in 1997 and from her visits to their Mall of America location, while Clark asserted that Basic Brown Bears had switched from plastic bags to copy the Workshops' signature cardboard carrier. The company settled with Basic Brown with a payment and a confidentiality agreement that hides any validity to these allegations. Build-A-Bear has 14 other lawsuits to protect 380 patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

In late October 2007, Build-A-Bear Workshop opened a massively multiplayer online game called Build-A-Bearville (also known as Bearville), developed in association with Frima Studio. It allowed users to play games, explore an expanding world, partake in special events, and chat in a safe community. In addition, Build-A-Bear was featured on an episode of Undercover Boss.

Redeemable codes were sold with some products from Build-A-Bear Workshops that could be used to unlock features and content within the game. However, these were not required in order to play. Anyone could create an account and play with access to most of the game’s features, even if they had not purchased a product from a Build-A-Bear Workshop. In January 2015, users received an email from the company stating that the virtual world will close on March 31st, 2015 it will be no longer playable after that time. It was replaced by the kids’ site “Bearville Alive!”, containing a web series featuring Build-a-Bear characters. Bearville former users were very upset by the news and some even went to the extent of making petitions to bring it back. So far, nothing has changed the decision of the Build-A-Bear staff for closing the site down.^{[clarification needed]}

Friends 2B Made was an interactive store that allowed customers to make dolls and purchase related accessories launched by Build-A-Bear in 2005. The store was open briefly in nine standalone locations and inside 94 other stores before closing in 2009.