Representing its first overhaul since opening its first store in 1997, Build-A-Bear Workshop unveiled a new concept store in West County Center in St. Louis that combines hands-on bear-making experiences with innovative technology designed to mirrors how kids play today.
"The 10-year-old girl of today is a lot different than the 10-year-old girl of 15 years ago mostly through technology," Maxine Clark, Build-A-Bear founder and CEO, told St. Louis Today. "So how we can make this fun and relevant to them?"
The process of moving through various bear-making stations remained fairly the same, but the overall experience gets modernized with some tech spectacle. Among the new features:
- A kiosk at the front of the store allows kids to play with the digital signage by waving their hands in front of it. Signage is also now able to change with the seasons, holidays or other special events.
- A new "Love Me" station enables guests to customize their stuffed animals with personality attributes displayed as emoticons on an interactive table. Unique traits, such as cuddly, brave, silly and smart, are then added to their animal's red satin hearts later in the production process.
- At the "Hear Me" station, instead of choosing from drawers with different sound chips, guests scroll through a touchscreen to select and load popular hits from current music or animal noises to be incorporated into their stuffed animal.
- At the Stuff Me station, guests can now add scents such as bubble gum, strawberry, cotton candy, and chocolate chip to their stuffed animal. The scents offered will change by season.
- The Fluff Me station was updated with the addition of a "water rippling and splashing" digital bathtub. The tub magically recognizes the items as they are placed on it and reacts with sensory effects such as virtual bubbles that appear when play soap is placed on the "water surface."
![[Image: Buiild-A-Bear]](/public/images/discussions/16319/build-a-bear-still.jpg)
Other more subtle changes including reducing the height of the bins of pre-stuffed animals so they are more within the reach of youngsters and separating the bear clothes into different sections for boys and girls
Six other locations featuring the new design will open this year. Some analysts had been calling for at least some changes as Build-A-Bear has posted losses in two of the past three years.
"I think it's important for them to show that it's new and fresh without breaking the bank," Sean McGowan, an analyst with Needham & Co., told St. Louis Today.