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Business

Bear market? American retailer wiped out in Denmark

admin
November 28th, 2014


This article is more than 10 years old.

Build-A-Bear Denmark declares bankruptcy

The Danish arm of the company Build-A-Bear, which gives customers the chance to put together their own teddy bear, has gone bankrupt, Børsen reports.

The company’s Danish website has gone offline and all of its shops, with the exception of the one next to Tivoli, have closed down. At the time of the bankruptcy, the chain had a total of five shops across the country.

Barely survived in 2013
A year and a half ago, the American parent company gave up its activities in Denmark after suffering millions of kroner in losses since starting on Danish shores in 2004. The Danish operation was however saved by John Nyhøj Kristensen, who came in as a new investor and reopened most of the Danish outlets.

“Build-A-Bear is a strong and sustainable brand. It is the experience and the staff’s personal involvement that sell the products. I’m convinced that there is still huge potential in Denmark,” Kristensen told Børsen when he came in as an investor in 2013.

At its height in 2010, the chain had ten shops in Denmark, making it the fourth biggest Build-A-Bear country at that time in terms of the number of retail locations.


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

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At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

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Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”