i had been in the retail business for about 20 plus years when i started buill debear, most recently as president of pela shoe sorce. I thought that retailing had a lot of opportunity to engage children in their imagin and we weren't doing it like we all talked about. And so one day i was out with my best friend katy, who was ten years old at the time. She just declared that, these are so easy, we could make them. They didn't want to sell to me. They thought i was crazy. But i heard something different. My brain went into this woolly wanka mode, and i saw exactly what i wanted to create in