Sharon Price John

as much as people believed in the wishes on these hearts.

Well, that led to a new and inspirational mission statement of we add a little more heart to life.

And yes, missions should be big.

And it created a strategy for us that was based on something that we had already organically become.

Build-A-Bear was already more than its original vision.

We just needed a business plan to profitably unlock that value.

So with that, the team was then able to go through the tedious process of turnaround and return to some operational excellence because it was just a step in becoming something more, but with heart.

So you're probably wondering, did it work?

Well, we returned to profitability that very year.

But more importantly, the MORE strategy, which it became, helped us recognize that we were not trapped in the mall-based retail that had created us.

So we opened in MORE places.

We understood where people were now going for fun and entertainment, like tourist locations, hospitality, everything from cruise ships to amusement parks to resorts.

And now we're in over 30 countries around the world.

with virtually all of our stores profitable.

We embraced the digital economy by opening a brand new website that was focused on more categories, like gifting and collectibles.

And that took our web business from less than 5 percent of total sales to somewhere between 15 to 20 percent of total sales.

And that led us to recognize that we could target more people.

That multi-generational aspect that I was sharing, that helped us to understand that teens and adults were a real target market for us.

And we happened to figure that out right at the beginning of a trend called kidulting.

Yeah, that's a real thing.