Why Build-a-Bear Workshop is outpacing big tech
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As consumers are doing more shopping online, and as President Donald Trump’s tariffs have been driving the price of goods up, many toy and mall brands have been struggling. But Build-a-Bear Workshop is thriving – the company’s stock has grown by nearly 1,200% over the past five years, outpacing growth by tech giants like Microsoft and Apple.
Host Elahe Izadi speaks with retail reporter Jackie Peiser about how this toy company has managed to thrive in a challenging economic moment.
Today’s show was produced by Sabby Robinson. It was edited by Peter Bresnan and mixed by Sean Carter and Sam Bair.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I recently was thinking about how to invest a little bit of money, and specifically, what |
| 0:07.7 | companies would be good to buy stock in. |
| 0:11.9 | The names that came to mind were the usual suspects, the ones dominating the headlines, |
| 0:17.4 | and selling popular tech or AI. |
| 0:20.6 | Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle. But my colleague, |
| 0:25.2 | Jackie Piser, had a different company in mind. She's a retail reporter for The Post and recently |
| 0:31.5 | looked into a business that's been outperforming all of the ones I just mentioned. The company, |
| 0:41.3 | build a bear workshop. Usually when retailers put out their earnings, we kind of just take a peek at how their stock price is doing, |
| 0:46.2 | because it can give an indication on what analysts are thinking and how well the company did. |
| 0:50.1 | And we were really surprised to see how well Buildabar stock has done in the last couple of years |
| 0:56.1 | and even more surprised when we compared it |
| 0:58.5 | to some of the biggest companies in the world. |
| 1:03.8 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, |
| 1:06.4 | this is Post Reports. |
| 1:08.5 | I'm Elahe-Izadi. |
| 1:10.5 | It's Tuesday, October 28th. |
| 1:13.2 | Today, Jackie explains how a store selling custom stuffed animals in the mall |
| 1:18.6 | became a financial success story. |
| 1:25.7 | Bill DeBare, as we said, is doing well as a company. |
| 1:29.6 | But just how well? |
| 1:31.2 | Like, what numbers are we talking about here? |
| 1:33.2 | Bill DeBare is doing extremely well. |
... |
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