An excerpt from this piece is provided below. To read the complete original article, please click here: Elisabeth Robert Rescues Errant Males at Vermont Teddy Bear

U.S. News and World Report

 

When Elisabeth Robert became the CEO of Vermont Teddy Bear Co. in 1997, the business was on the verge of bankruptcy and going through an identity crisis. "We were unable to sell teddy bears off of retail shelves for $70," Robert says. But she had no intention of cutting costs or outsourcing jobs. Robert (pronounced Ro-BEAR) soon learned that most of the bears leaving the Madison Avenue store didn't go home with the purchaser but were shipped as gifts. Vermont Teddy Bear, Robert decided, had to be reinvented: from a teddy bear store to a Bear-Gram gift delivery business. And great rewards have come with that new identity, as the company's annual revenue soared to more than $66 million in 2005.