Today’s story was one I first encountered at that House of History museum in Stuttgart. My assignment for my class was to do a 5 minute class presentation about something to do with the businesses in Baden-Württemberg. I stumbled on a story about a brave little girl in the 1800s who grew up to be a shrewd and powerful businesswoman, the founder of a company still flourishing today. Here’s her story:

The year was 1849. A little girl named Margarete, just 18 months old, was stricken with polio. She survived, but the illness took its toll: unable to walk again, she’d be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, and she only ever had limited use of her right hand.

Her family, like most of the people in the Württemberg region of Germany at that time, believed strongly in piety through hard work. So, Margarete’s disabilities were no reason to let her shirk around the house all day – she was expected to do chores, just like her brother and sisters.

Plus, her family knew that it would be impossible for a girl in Margarete’s situation ever to marry, and they worried how she would be able to support herself as an adult. Her two older sisters were being trained as seamstresses as a way for them to earn money before their (expected) marriages, and this seem liked a good solution for Margarete as well. A woman could make a modest living sewing fabrics and dresses for other women’s wedding trousseaus. It strikes me as somewhat sad that Margarete would have been told that she would never have a wedding of her own, and yet she had to help others plan for theirs, but that was the reality of her life in the 1870s.

So, Margarete became a seamstress, and joined with her sisters to offer sewing services in their little town. They were quite talented, and after a short while, Margarete and her sisters had made enough money that they were able to buy a sewing machine, one of the first in their area. However, sewing machines had the control wheel only on the right, and Margarete couldn’t use her right hand very well. Being resourceful, though, she figured out how to modify the machine to move the control wheel to the left side. Using the machine enabled her to sew more easily, so she could take on more work and therefore make more money.

Life went on. Margarete’s sisters, as expected, got married and left the sewing business all to Margarete, where she continued to sewed bridal items for other women. After a while she was doing well enough that she was even able to employ a few assistants to help her in her apartment/sewing center in the ground floor of her parent’s house.

One day, Margarete spied a sewing pattern in a magazine for a cute, practical item: a small pin cushion in the shape of an elephant, made of felt and stuffed with wool. What a cute idea!, Margaret thought, I think I’ll make them for my friends for Christmas. And so she did.

Now her friends were delighted with the gifts. But  something unexpected also happened: all the children of her friends  really liked the little elephant pin cushions, too, and they “stole” them from their mothers to use as a new kind of toy to play with.

You see, there was no notion of a stuffed animal toy at this time in Württemberg, or maybe even not in all of Germany. Margarete saw the children playing with the little stuffed elephants and an idea was born: she decided she would make stuffed toys in a variety of animal shapes: monkeys, pigs, and, of course, elephants, to name but a few. Her idea was a big hit: these little handmade stuffed animal toys sold like hot cakes. Within a year, Margaret had made enough money from these new-fangled stuffed animal toys to establish her own company: Margarete Steiff, Gmbh. [Note: “Gmbh” is the German equivalent of “Ltd” for companies in English, I believe.]

From 1880-1902 Margarete’s firm continued to produce sought-after, hand-made stuffed toy items that were greatly popular in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Not bad for a little girl whose family despaired that she’d ever amount to anything because of her handicap, eh?

And not bad for a woman starting her own business in 1880. That was not exactly a liberated age for woman, after all. Consider that woman did not have the right to have a bank account in their own name until 1954 in Germany, and you start to understand the enormous obstacles that she would have had to overcome to be a successful businesswoman in the late 19th century.

But successful she was: from 1880-1902 Margarete’s firm’s sold stuffed animals at a steady rate. Things really took off in 1902, though, and by 1906, Margarete Steiff, Gmbh was such a going — and growing— concern that the company had to build a new factory to handle all the orders that were coming in from around the world. Margarete employed a full-time staff of 400, 1,800 part-time workers, most of whom were unmarried woman. In 1906 alone the company produced 1,700,000 toys. The new factory included a wheel-chair ramp that ran along the outside of the building to allow Margarete access to every floor. Until her death in 1909, she daily monitored the quality of the articles that were produced – she was a stickler for doing things the right way. “Nothing but the best for the children” was her personal and corporate motto.

So, what happened in 1902 to really make the company’s business take off? Well, her favorite nephew had a wacky idea to make something bigger and more bizarre than anything anyone had ever made before. What was it? And what happy accident of timing contributed to the success of it? While you may be able to guess, you might not know that there are different versions of this story, depending on which country is writing the history. For example, the English and German Wikipedia entries differ about a crucial piece of this story.

This post is already running a bit long, so you’ll have to tune in tomorrow to find out about the toy that changed the world … and how it came to be.