Ms. Robert: Our company, the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, has been in business now for a little over 20 years and has evolved from being simply a manufacturer of teddy bears ' early on, selling teddy bears at wholesale ' to being a direct marketer and direct-to-consumer retailer of the Bear-Gram gift, which is a whole lot more than just a teddy bear. A Vermont Teddy Bear Bear-Gram includes a customized Vermont Teddy Bear to suit special occasions such as the birth of a new baby or an anniversary or a birthday or to offer best wishes to someone who might be in the hospital ' we call that the Get-Well Bear. This customized bear can be further personalized with artwork or embroidery, and it comes with a personalized greeting card, a free candy treat, and is packaged in a colorful gift box, complete with air hole so that the Teddy Bear can breathe on his journey via Federal Express to its new owner. All of this really amounts to our company and the Bear-Gram business being in the gift delivery service business. We're not in the toy business. We don't consider ourselves to really be a teddy bear company. Now, going back to the history, the company struggled for a number of years early on until this Bear-Gram concept was first introduced onto the radio back in 1990. Then as a result of this direct- response radio advertising strategy, the company grew very rapidly in the early and mid-1990s ' in fact, we were on Inc. magazine's list of the fastest-growing private companies in America two years' running as a result of the success of this new concept. Since then, the company has begun to diversify into new product categories, both of which are still in the gift delivery service business. One is a PajamaGram, which, like a Bear-Gram is a high-end gift that's delivered to someone in the same fashion as flowers get delivered. A PajamaGram, however, is a pair of pajamas, typically accompanied by bath salts and perhaps a pair of slippers or a robe, packaged in a wonderful organza hatbox ' and again, delivered with a personalized card in a nice gift box as a true high-end premium gift. Then the last product category to come to the fore here is something we call a TastyGram. The TastyGram again is a high-end gift. You can figure it out: it's food! So that's the history of the company and more or less an overview of what we do today.
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