Dan Woods talks with Maxine Clark, Founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop. Maxine shares about her career with Build-A-Bear, as well as her mentoring of women and minority entrepreneurs. Maxine will be a speaker at the Cape Chamber’s annual Women in Business: At the Heart of it All Celebration on September 20, 2024.
Woods:
You're listening to KRCU, and I'm joined now by Maxine Clark. She's the founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop, and she's going to be in Cape Girardeau later in September to speak at the Cape Chamber Women's Luncheon. Maxine, it's good to talk with you. Thanks for being here today.
Clark:
Nice to talk to you, too.
Woods:
So, tell us a little bit about your background and how Build-A-Bear came to be.
Clark:
Well, prior to Build-A-Bear, I had been in the retail business for about 25 years, working for the main department stores in various divisions. I started out of college in Washington, DC, on my way to law school. I got a job at the head company in Washington and was very successful at that job. I decided to take a leave of absence from law school, which I'm still on today. And the company moved me to St. Louis a couple of years later where the headquarters were, and I was able to grow in the company from all of its divisions, including Famous Barr…not all divisions, but Famous Barr, which was a department store here, and now Macy's, Venture stores, which was a discount store they owned at the time, and then Payless Shoe Source, which I helped in the acquisition. And then I later became the president of Payless Shoe Source.
Woods:
Wow. I saw in another interview that you had a dream to be on the Supreme Court at some point as that law path was taking off. Is that right?
Clark:
Yes, I was thinking, you know, when I went to…I went to Florida Girls State--I’m from Florida--and I was elected to the Supreme Court in that week that we were there. And I got sort of the Supreme Court bug, but there weren't women Supreme Court justices at that time. I went to college a long time ago. So, I don't know how I…other than that experience…which I think are really important for young people to have…is you don't know what's possible for yourself out there.
Woods:
Yeah. Whenever you started Build-A-Bear Workshop, was it sort of unusual to have the customer make the product? That was sort of different, right?
Clark:
It was different. There were a couple of places. Vermont Teddy Bear in Vermont had a factory where they made their stuffed animals in America, and they let people see it. They didn't let them make their own. And then there was one in California. There was a factory making stuffed animals, and they let you sort of walk through the process. But when I saw that, I knew it could be much more engaging, and I knew that we could create something much more meaningful and fun and more Disneyesque, if you will.
Woods:
So, when you started Build-A-Bear…Entrepreneurs, I think, are just special people because you have confidence. You have the idea that maybe no one else had, or maybe you had it, but they didn't have the confidence to do it. What gave you the confidence to go ahead and pursue that and take that risk, I guess?
Clark:
Children. I…my next-door neighbor and her brother, we talked about it. It was really inspired by them. We were looking for Beanie Babies, and we couldn't find the one that Katie wanted. She said, these are so easy, we could make these. And I knew they were easy because I had been in charge of toys, imported toys from the Orient for the different businesses. I had been to factories that make upholstery, that use stuffing machines. And I thought…I had a light bulb moment that I could actually do this with…You know, it was very possible, especially in a mall. And sort of a mini factory. And I know that kids love to go on field trips. I did when I was a child, to see how things are made. The fascination with that is pretty unbelievable. And we can use it to do way more inspiration for children than we do right now. And so, it worked. We created this really fantasy-kind-of-store, and it was bright and colorful. People were attracted to the colors. They love stuffed animals.
I didn't invent teddy bears. Ray Kroc didn't invent hamburgers. Howard Schultz didn't invent coffee. And it's what you do with it that really matters. And it doesn't have to be a brand new idea that nobody ever thought of to be successful. It can be something that somebody's thought of, but they just haven't really made it into the 21st century. They just kind of let it dawdle around, and it didn't grow. But Build-A-Bear is a very strong concept and continues to grow.
Woods:
Did you think it was going to be as big as it's turned out to be? I think there's 500 stores, maybe more than that now.
Clark:
Yes, about 500 all around the world. I did know it was going to be successful. I wrote a 10-year plan. And while the 10-year plan didn't have 500 stores, it had several hundred stores in it. We achieved that objective. And the good news was we exceeded our sales plans very dramatically.
Woods:
You stepped down as CEO in 2013, and I read some of your bio. You stay really busy. What are some projects you're working on now?
Clark:
Well, I'm very engaged in the city of St. Louis and its reimagination. And so, I went my first project that I did started down in 2014 was this called the Delmar DivINe, which is the reimagination of a historic hospital here on Delmar, which is a dividing line in St. Louis between rich and poor, black and white. It was about 500,000 square feet. So, it was just half of a mall. That didn't bother me. I that's manageable. I did not realize how complicated an old building was, but that's neither here nor there. I knew it had potential, and it was big enough to make a difference. We have, over the course of the 10 years or so, we have turned it into 150 apartments, offices for over 30 nonprofits. We also have retail, bank, a pharmacy, an urgent care, a restaurant, and an Edward Jones office. All those apartments have amazing amenities. We also have a swimming pool for them, a gym, a gym that the offices can share, also. And then in phase two, we'll have more apartments and more offices, as well. Phase two is just the last two buildings we haven't finished yet.
Woods:
Do you ever get scared by a project and think, wow, this is going to be too big, or this is going to be too unwieldy? Or do you just try to figure out a way to make it work in your mind?
Clark:
No, I actually, I think that's my superpower. One of my superpowers is I have the ability to see it in my head and know that if I can see it, it can be it. And how do I…but then how do I do it? And I don't do it all myself. You have to find the right people. I didn't build every Build-A-Bear store myself. I certainly wasn't an accountant, so I couldn't have managed the accounting of Build-A-Bear unless I hired a fantastic person to be my CFO. So, you if you think you have to do it yourself, you're in serious trouble. Although in the early days of coming up with the idea and the business plan and meeting with the bankers and meeting with the landlords, you might have to be doing that by yourself because you're just one store and you don't have the revenue yet. But once you get going, you have to realize what you really need. And in my business plan, I knew what I didn't know. And I knew that I needed to hire those people on a certain timeline in order for us to be able to achieve what we wanted to achieve.
Woods:
Yeah. You do a lot of work with supporting women-owned businesses and minority businesses. Tell us a little bit about some of that work that you've been doing.
Clark:
Yes, I believe that. Well, first of all, I remember what it was like when I started my company and how hard it was to get a bank loan and how hard it was to get people to be interested, to finance, invest in you. And I was an experienced…25-year experienced…and had been a president and CEO of a company. So, I was not without experience, which a lot of women and minorities are younger and don't have all that experience. So, if I had that trouble, how much would they have? And so, I really decided that I would look to, and also it's a whole new marketplace, especially with minority founders. They have a whole bunch of ideas about new products that we wouldn't maybe as a white person have thought we needed, but they know it's missing in their market. And I work with a lot of high school students who have brilliant ideas. They may not be ready yet to go into the full running of a company, but I hope that they get enough satisfaction out of that high school programming that they…when they go to college, take an entrepreneurship class or they go to the community college, and they really don't lose that. They may change their idea over time, but they realize they have the bug of being an entrepreneur and making something better than what they found.
Woods:
It sounds like, Maxine, that's a way for you to sort of give back…is to help these young entrepreneurs, sort of, maybe get things figured out.
Clark:
Yeah, I think I'm giving forward rather than giving back. Because they're the future, and if there are a tremendous amount of talent and energy and ideas, and if we aren't investing in that talent, then we have some real problems ahead of us. I actually did not learn about it. I don't think I even knew the word entrepreneur, even though my father owned his own business, but he thought of himself as a business owner. That's how he described himself. And I think the word entrepreneur has become much more important. In the last 25 years or so, people are proud to say they're an entrepreneur. And that may not mean you're successful yet. That might mean if you're a business owner, you might be sounding a little bit more successful. Entrepreneur means you've got ideas, you're creative, you're maybe running your own business. But more likely, there's more people running around with ideas in their head that are called entrepreneurs and people who really have turned something into a highly profitable ongoing business. And a lot of times young people or people in general start a business and then they look for somebody to buy it, get out of it, go do something else. I'm sort of a serial entrepreneur, but not in the case that I start a business, sell it, and go on. I mean, Build-A-Bear was a public company. I wanted to find the right CEO for the company so that I could move on. I was 48 years old when I started Build-A-Bear. So, I wasn't a spring chicken, and I had some other things to do. So, I knew I needed to do it. But also, I wanted the company to go on forever. And so, you need to pass on the leadership at the appropriate time. And so, we have a great CEO who's doing a phenomenal job and she and I get along great. And I don't have day-to-day engagement in the company, but if I wanted to be there every day, she probably would let me be there. But I had a lot of other things to do. And I see the role of an entrepreneur, especially a successful one like I was, to be able to give forward, pay it forward, and also invest in your own community. And that's what the Delmar DivINe project is, an investment in St. Louis, a legacy project, if you will, because the hospital was there for over 100 years, and it was basically closed, empty, boarded up. And how does that happen? How do we take these incredibly big, beautiful buildings that were built at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century and just let them rot in place…and what that does to a neighborhood, as well? So, I love history. When I moved to St. Louis, I bought a house in Lafayette Square, which is a historic neighborhood. I loved it. I totally loved it. I found all these beautiful gems in St. Louis, but since I've been here all these years, some of those gems have really fallen on disrepair because they were in neighborhoods where people weren't investing.
Woods:
Well, the last thing I want to ask you is for folks who come to this Women's Luncheon here in Cape Girardeau in a few weeks, what message are you going to share with the audience?
Clark:
Well, first of all, I want people to know that I was 48 years old when I started Build-A-Bear. I'm very proud of that. I think that sometimes we think it's only for kids. But actually, the older you get, the more you learn and the more experience you have in order to be successful. And so, you have a little bit more confidence. You have more money. People look at you a little bit differently. But mostly, you could do it at any age. But I don't…I think what a lot of people think it's for the young at heart or the young. I'm the young at heart. And I am very young, even though I'm not chronologically young. I think on trends. I think about music. I think about art. I think about all the things that young people are thinking about. And I get them to tell me what they're thinking about so I can enjoy it, as well. And that's a really fun part of my job. So, I talk about how you can stay connected. It's going to be a fireside chat.
And Tina [Klocke], my CFO at Build-A-Bear and my CFO at my family foundation and COO, she is the head of the board of trustees…I'm not sure the right name of it…of Southeast Missouri University. So, she spends a lot of time down there. She's very familiar. And when I go there, she usually goes with me. So, I said, can I bring Tina? And they said, yeah, bring her. And she'll be doing the interview. So together, we're a team. And we've been a team for almost 28 years, which is really amazing to be working together with somebody that I didn't know the day she walked in to meet me for an interview. My accounting firm, my personal accounting firm introduced us, and we had so much in common, but we never would have met, you know, had we not been introduced, and we had not done Build-A-Bear. So, when you think about the benefit of being an entrepreneur, one of them is the friends, the acquaintances, the partnerships that you generate that stay with you forever. And I'm very, very fortunate to have Tina not only as a friend, but as a partner in everything that I do, a wise person that keeps me on the straight and narrow because she's a financial person, and I'm more of the idea person. But we have a great time together, so we're going to be together. And I'm looking forward to that conversation so we can start the conversation. And I hope that everybody will join in and ask more questions because a lot of people, even in Cape, who come up to St. Louis come to a Build-A-Bear. People have had the Build-A-Bear experience, and they want to know a lot more about it. And I'm glad to share it. And I hope that it inspires at least one other person. But maybe it'll be two or 10 or 15 or 50 to say, I can do that. And it's not always has to be on the same scale as Build-A-Bear. But there's lots of things or opportunities, especially in small town America, smaller cities where the people don't have to go so far to get what they want. I think it's a huge opportunity, and I look forward to visiting again in Cape Girardeau and also to meet so many new people that I haven't met before and sharing my story.
Woods:
Maxine Clark, it's been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for being here with us today.
Clark:
It's my pleasure and thank you for having me, Dan. Have a great weekend. Thanks.
Woods:
You, too.
