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Steiff history
Margarete Steiff was born in 1847 in Giengen, a town in Germany's Black Forest. As a child, she suffered from polio, but even though she was confined to a wheelchair, she did not allow her infirmities to dampen her industrious spirit. She became an accomplished seamstress with her own dressmaking company. The young entrepreneur would collect remnant pieces of felt from the dresses and turn them into animals for the children to play with in her neighborhood. It was a felt elephant pincushion that became a neighborhood favorite and was put into larger production on 1880.
With the help of her nephew, Richard, Margaretc Steiff established the Steiff company in 1877, devoted to the production of mohair animals and bears. Richard COlwinced Margarete that a joined bear should be the focus of the product line, which was first prescnted at the Leipzig Toy Fair in 1903. Richard had obsened the grizzly bears at the Stuttgart Zoo and thought a mohair version would be a prime product. The bears' acceptance was mixed, and they wcre evcn ridiculed bv some as "stuffed misfits." However, at the conclusion of the fair, an American confectioner from New York ordered 3,000 bears on the spot. By 1908, close to a million Steiff bears had been sold.
Today, Steiff continues to produce a variety of plush and mohair animals, but it is the bear that dominates the company's current production and the international secondan collector's market.
