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  The Vermont Teddy Bear Company is one of the largest
producers of teddy bears and the largest seller of teddy bears by
mail order and Internet. The company handcrafts each of its teddy
bears and produces almost 500,000 teddy bears each year. The company
was formerly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker
symbol BEAR, but was taken private by The Mustang Group, a
Boston-based private equity firm, on September 30, 2005, partially
to avoid the reporting requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.  
The company was founded in 1981 by John Sortino, who sold
handcrafted teddy bears in an open-air market in Burlington,
Vermont. Sortino happened upon the idea of packaging and selling
bears through the mail when a tourist visiting Burlington wanted a
bear mailed to her home. The concept was called the "Bear-Gram",
which features the customized teddy bear placed in a box (complete
with an "air hole") and stuffed with other goodies.
 
By 1995, the company moved into its new headquarters in Vermont's
Champlain Valley. The company currently has two factories: one in
Shelburne and one in Newport. The Shelburne factory is an especially
popular tourist destination, and also serves as a concert site for
the annual Vermont Mozart Festival, offering a venue for
family-oriented events. The company also maintains two retail
locations in Vermont - Shelburne and on the main road between
Waterbury and Stowe.
 
VTB acquired Calyx & Corolla, an upscale flower company
headquartered in Vero Beach, Florida in 2003. Ironically, one of
Vermont Teddy Bear's marketing slogans claims that sending a teddy
bear is "a creative alternative to sending flowers". In 2005, the
company launched a new sister company, Gift Bag Boutique, which
offers handbags and purses along with many make-up accessories.
Along with PajamaGram, which sells gift pajamas, and TastyGram,
which offers gourmet food gifts, the creation of this sister company
brings the total number of companies under the Vermont Teddy Bear
umbrella to five.
 
"Crazy" Controversy
For Valentine's Day of 2005, Vermont Teddy Bear caused widespread
controversy by offering a "Crazy for You" Bear. The bear was offered
dressed in a white straight jacket with a red heart embroidered onto
the front of the jacket. A tag entitled "Commitment Papers" came
with the bear. The tag read "Can't eat, can't sleep, my heart's
racing. Diagnosis – crazy for you."
Mental health groups from all over the U.S. asked for the bear to be
pulled out of production and removed from VTB's website. Many groups
called for a boycott of the company. They claimed that the bear
stigmatized those people suffering from a mental illness.
The company's response was that there was no offense intended and it
was merely a play on the phrase "I'm crazy about you". The company
claimed that the bear was intended to be a light-hearted depiction
of the sentiment of love.
When asked to remove the bear from their inventory, VTB responded by
keeping their existing stock up for sale although they stated that
they would not make any more in the future. The price of the bears
from VTB was US$69.95. Soon after the controversy started the
"Crazy" bears could be found on eBay with bids reaching $100-200.
After the company sold out, which happened within just a few days of
the story hitting the news, the eBay bids reached several hundred
dollars. |
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