Build-a-Bear Workshop, a St. Louis-based brand, has been expanding its tourist destinations and shop-within-a-shops in 35 countries. The redesigned Build-a-Bear Workshop at FAO Schwarz in New York offers a variety of non-licensed animals and personalized touches. The brand appeals to all ages, with 40 percent of its business coming from tweens, teens, and adults.
The Very Best Car SeatsMy finished frog stuffed animal with its birth certificate and a bin full of unstuffed teddy bears at FAO Schwarz. , and licensed characters like Bluey, Hello Kitty, and assorted Pokémon, is nearly 30 years old.
For most of its tenure, the St. Louis–based brand has been a mall staple popular for birthdays and other milestone celebrations. Over the last five years, as many other brick-and-mortar toy stores have struggled to stay open, Build-a-Bear has been expanding.
There are still plenty of Build-a-Bear stores in local malls, but the company’s bigger focus is on tourist destinations like FAO Schwarz, Great Wolf Lodge, and Carnival cruises, as well as shop-within-a-shops in 35 countries.a record-breaking $529.8 million in total sales for the 2025 fiscal year, increasing its profits by 6.7 percent over the previous year. I didn’t go to Build-a-Bear as a kid and have never bought a gift there, so forat the Strategist, I visited the recently redesigned Build-a-Bear Workshop at FAO Schwarz in New York, just down the aisle from theLike a lot of successful toy brands, Build-a-Bear appeals to all ages.
According to Chris Hurt, Build-a-Bear’s incoming CEO, who will take over the role in June, about 40 percent of the brand’s business comes from tweens, teens, and adults. This wasn’t always the case, but has been a driving force behind the brand’s staggering growth over the last five years, during which time Many people who first experienced Build-a-Bear as children are now parents taking their own kids to the store.
On top of that, exclusive licensing partnerships with brands like Pokémon,and Sanrio have introduced serious collectors to the brand. Build-a-Bear further nurtures this multigenerational appeal with a dedicated section of its online store called the.
This age-gated section of the brand’s website is home to highly detailed pop-culture collaborations and cheeky designs “intended for shoppers 18 and older,” like a I wasn’t prepared for the huge variety of non-licensed animals at the FAO Schwarz Build-a-Bear outpost, and I certainly wasn’t prepared to choose just one from the dozens of different species. I didn’t count them all, but depending on the size of each store, there are usually about 50 animals available to be stuffed, including bears, rabbits, frogs, cows, cats, dogs, turtles, horses, sharks, and pandas.
Build-a-Bear’s design team pays close attention to trends and was one of the first major plush-toy companies to make a, the brand’s current best seller. Picking a teddy bear seemed a bit boring, so after several laps and careful consideration of what my 3-year-old son might like, I chose the, which typically costs $14; the most expensive are the giant plush animals that cost about $100.
The frog I chose costs $30 without any clothing or accessories, which isn’t cheap, but I think it’s worth the price, considering how big it is and how much fun it is to go through the building process. I was quickly won over despite my initial skepticism. The Build-a-Bear store experience was much more little-kid-friendly than stopping by theat the LEGO Store.
And with all of the personalized touches you can add, your new stuffed animal makes a good special-occasion gift. When you arrive at Build-a-Bear, a “bear builder” employee will ask you to choose an unfilled stuffed animal. This was a novelty, and I enjoyed lifting each deflated friend to see what they looked like. Some, like my frog, have heads that are pre-stuffed.
Once you’ve made your selection, you get to pick a sound that your new stuffed pal will play; there are over 70 available, from realistic animal sounds to dinosaur roars to thetheme song. These are recorded on a battery-powered plastic disc that gets inserted into your animal’s paw and features a button that plays the sound when you squeeze it.
You can also record a custom message or sound, which requires a slightly different piece of equipment . If you want your animal to smell like vanilla or bubblegum or birthday cake for several years, you can add a scented disc as well. I am not a fan of scented dolls or stuffies, so I opted out of this step.
Then it’s time to fill your animal and choose whether you want it to feel floppy, medium-firm, or firm. I chose medium-firm and got to operate the stuffing machine with a big foot pedal. It’s a spectacle: Once you step down, you see the poly fill spin inside a huge clear cylinder; there’s a smaller see-through tube at the bottom leading to a metal tube where the bear builder attaches your animal.
I also got to pick a fabric heart that the bear builder put inside my frog’s chest, along with a battery-powered heart-shaped button that vibrates when pressed. Adding these two hearts is called the Heart Ceremony, and it’s always a little different depending on the animal or character you choose.
“If you pick acharacter, the bear builder might ask you to rub the fabric heart on your arm so your stuffed animal’s lightsaber is strong,” says Hurt. Finally, the bear builder sews your new friend closed and presents them to you. An assortment of battery-powered sound buttons and hearts that play sounds and glow or vibrate when you press on your Build-a-Bear’s paw and chest, respectively.
After that, you are free to wander around and shop for clothing and accessories from an immense array of T-shirts, dresses, jeans, shorts, costumes, sneakers, boots, hats, sunglasses, underwear, sports balls, backpacks, drinks, and even cell phones with buttons that make different noises. If you want to make your bear even more personalized, some Build-a-Bear locations, including the one at FAO Schwarz, offer custom embroidery on the spot.
I got my son’s name embroidered on the back of a little gray “I Love NYC” hoodie. Before you leave, you’ll get a birth certificate for your Build-a-Bear. You can also purchase a drawstring backpack carrier, a stampable passport, and a number of other travel accessories.
The Build-a-Bear staff at FAO Schwarz told me that customers record custom messages for special occasions like birthdays, graduations, promposals, and wedding anniversaries, and for all sorts of other reasons, such as sending a gift to family members who are far away or service members stationed abroad. One employee even told me that Kim Kardashian apparently keeps some of the custom Record Your Voice sound buttons around her house to leave messages for her kids when she’s traveling.
It’s also common for people to record a last voicemail message from a deceased loved one to put into their Build-a-Bear. You can change the sound in your Build-a-Bear at any time by bringing it into a store, where an employee will open it up, make the swap, and sew it closed again. But you can also do the entire recording process online and add it to a stuffed animal to be shipped to you or picked up in store.
All that customization adds up fast, so I asked Hurt about the best Build-a-Bear options for shoppers with tighter budgets.
“Birthdays are really important to us. So if a child is 4 years old, they can come in and get the Birthday Treat Bear for only $4. If they’re 2, it’s $2. If they’re 1, it’s $1,” he says.
The retail price of the Birthday Treat Bear is $14 , making this an especially good deal for very little kids. Almost all of the animals and some of the licensed characters are also available in miniatures called Mini Beans, which are more affordable and still very cute. Those are pre-stuffed, however, so they don’t provide the full Build-a-Bear experience.
Some customers buy the Mini Beans to create mom-and-baby bundles tally up to $116. For everyday families on a budget, building a bear at Build-a-Bear is definitely a special-occasion event.
But the stores do at least carry a huge variety of smaller stuffed animals and bag charms that come pre-stuffed and are cheaper than, say, a similar-size Jellycat. I’m not sure I would go back to the store and do the exact same all-out splurge experience again, unless it was for a very special gift.
But I am thinking about bringing my son back for a $4 bear when he turns 4 just so he can experience the magic.is designed to surface useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Every product is independently selected by our team of editors, whom you can read aboutThe 72 Best Early Memorial Day Sales New York*Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. You'll receive the next newsletter in your inbox.
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