Build-A-Biz

When women entrepreneurs build a business with technology as the infrastructure, you get some interesting results. My son, age 8, has been begging me to visit Build-A-Bear with him. I finally gave in and went over to the mall to experience this new phenomenon first-hand.

Build-A-Bear was founded by a woman named Maxine Clark who may just be one of the most savvy marketers to come down the pike. Just as Pine and Gilmore explained in their great book, The Experience Economy, taking a regular cup of coffee and turning it into the experience known as Starbuck's, creates value that lets you build a loyal, intimate customer base and charge a premium price.

At Build-A-Bear Clark has figured out how to turn buying a teddy bear into a two-hour religious experience. Enter the cheery shop, look at a wall full bins holding unstuffed stuffed animals, pick out the $15 - $20 pelt of your choice, and get ready for an experience that can NOT be called simply "buying a stuffed animal." The short version goes like this. Pick out a bear pelt (or lion, dog, tiger, rabbit, etc) , pick out a sound for your animal, pick out a tiny red gingham heart, go to the Stuffing Lady (my term, not theirs), let her use her glass lion-cage type stuffing machine, which tumbles the fluffy white stuffing inside for all to see, with it's handy chrome fluff-shooting pipe to bring your bear to life, shooting stuffing into each limb. She makes your child repeat some incantations about how brainy the bear will be, how loving his heart will be, how brave he will be. After the animal is fully stuffed, she sews him up, then it's off to the birth certificate area, then to the air blowers to fluff his fur. All around the shop are outfits for your bear, shoes, hats, backpacks, NFL uniforms, even tents, as well as tiny stuffed animals for him to take home as well.

This piece from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette by Teresa F. Lindeman gives you a detailed description of the B-a-B experience, complete with photos of the fluff-shooting machine.

If they didn't knock their competitors out of the box by expert "experience marketing," they have also done some brilliant things in terms of "cause marketing" -- working with many non-profits to promote literacy, championing endangered species and animal rights issues and getting very politically correct endorsements from the likes of Susan Sarandon.

Throw in some co-branding with heavy weight cool brands like Sketchers (yes, the bears can buy designer sneakers) and The Limited Too and you have an amazing marketing powerhouse.

Ready to add the technology infrastructure? In the store, there are some cool work stations with painted up monitors and keyboards where you sit with your kid and input most of the data any direct marketer would kill for -- name, address, zip, email, kid's birthday, etc. -- all supposedly in order to generate a Build-A-Bear Birth Certificate for your new stuffed animal -- but obviously with the intention of building one heck of a robust database. With such savvy use of technology, I can imagine their back office operations are equally powerful. Their website has a nice ecommerce interface and the extra clothes we ordered online and the free cardboard armoire they tossed in to keep the animal's clothes in arrived quickly, nicely presented and needless to say, my son flipped for the stuff.

[BTW, just saw this great post Glenn Reynolds wrote about Build-A-Bear in September. Check it out.]