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ROAD SHOW

Build-A-Bear Workshop truck rolls concept to new markets

BY DONNA MITCHELL

Build-A-Bear Workshop has hit the road with a truck-based store that will be stopping at more than 60 sports and entertainment events across the country, covering about 45,000 miles this year.

Fresh from the mid-April Atlanta Dogwood Festival, the Build-A-Bear Workshop On Tour’s next stop will be the Wichita River Festival, Wichita, Kan., this month.

“The mobile workshop is a great way to bring our concept to wherever families go to have fun,” said Maxine Clark, founder and chief executive of Build-A-Bear Workshop. The tour builds on the company’s strategy of tapping into strong tourist markets and creating vibrant stores there, Clark says.

Build-A-Bear operates a store in Myrtle Beach, S.C., the second-largest tourist area in the U.S. after Orlando, Fla., according to Clark. It also operates stores at the Opry Mills, in Nashville, Tenn., and in the Downtown Disney at the Disneyland Resort, in Anaheim, Calif.

The idea is not to plant new mall-based or freestanding stores once the tour pulls out of town, says Clark. It is rather to expose more people to the company’s retail and entertainment experience, which allows customers to create customized toy bears and accessorize them.

The bright yellow, 53-foot-long truck’s side doors fold down for extra floor space, and temporary walls and stairs are put in place to create an 800-square-foot Build-A-Bear store, complete with all the toy-making supplies available at the mainly mall-based regular stores. The facility is festooned with colorful paw prints and smiling bears, and topped off with a 15-foot inflatable Bearemy, the company’s mascot. Within four hours the mobile store is parked, set up and buzzing with associates helping customers with their bears. At that point, the toy-making process at the rolling unit is identical to the one at the brick-and-mortar units.

There are eight creation stations for each step in the process. Patrons select the animal type, include a self-recorded or prerecorded message, stuff the bear, insert a bar code that identifies the owner, and finally name, fluff and dress the toy.

The company says it will donate a portion of the proceeds from sales of the Read Teddy plush toy will be donated to literacy and education programs.

The truck-store is equipped with a satellite dish for communicating with headquarters in St. Louis. Three full-time managers and a driver travel with the truck. Additionally, the company assigns about 10 associates to help this full-time team. Clark declined to say how much the tour is costing the company.

The tour kicked off in early February at the Super Bowl, in Jacksonville, Fla. The company plans to operate the truck for a total of about 200 business days before wrapping up, though at press time executives had not yet decided when and where that will be. The tour rolled through the NBA All-Star Jam Session, in Denver, and the Miami-Dade County Fair, in Miami.

If there is still any child or adult out there who has not heard of Build-A-Bear Workshop or walked past one of its 170 stores in 40 states and Canada, this tour is part of the company’s strategy to put that right.

Most of the sites on this year’s trek will be within an hour’s drive of an existing Build-A-Bear store. Clark says the company plans to operate the truck indefinitely, which is good news for those kids who live in smaller markets and haven’t experienced the concept.

“Over time we will bring it to places where we don’t have stores in the vicinity,” she said.