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.
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
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.