How Build-A-Bear’s CEO engineered a multi-million dollar turnaround

Fortune

Build-A-Bear's CEO helped bring the brand to new heights—Sharon Price John and her journey to the C-suite started as a teenager working at a local McDonald’s.

Transcript

00:00I think that I am most proud of the fact that the heart of Build-A-Bear still beats and

00:06that we have both believed and proven that you can be a company that adds a little more

00:12heart to life and be successful.

00:14I grew up in a small town in Tennessee, south of Nashville.

00:19I went to undergrad at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee.

00:23My first professional job was in a big furniture store as the head of marketing and merchandising.

00:28I then went to an ad agency in Knoxville after that.

00:32I ended up working at another major agency where a gentleman on the client side, he recommended

00:39that I get my MBA and he talked me into applying to Columbia and it took a lot for me to convince

00:46myself that was a possible dream.

00:49I didn't want to do what most MBAs from Columbia do, which is venture capitalism or private

00:54equity or investment banking or management consulting.

00:57So I sought out brands and businesses that were really inspiring and special to me.

01:03I did get the job at Mattel, but not without a few tries.

01:07I ran Barbie fashions, which was awesome.

01:09And then I went to Stride Right Children's Group.

01:12I was recruited there to be the president of the division of it to turn around the retail

01:17business.

01:18And I had not had any experience doing that, but we turned that around, returned the company

01:23to profitability on both the wholesale and the retail side.

01:26That in so many ways made me a pretty viable candidate for the CEO of Build-A-Bear.

01:32It was a difficult turnaround.

01:34The company had lost $49 million the year before I got there.

01:38The world had changed in 2008, 2009, 2010, leading up to me coming in in 2013.

01:45And there really wasn't a going back.

01:47We laid out a strategy that was about monetizing the extraordinary equity that was in this brand.

01:55We popped out with a great team and a great strategy, not just thriving, but surviving.

02:00And we're now, I've had three years of record setting results.

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