Case Study: Build-A-Bear achieves an immersive, high-performance 3D online shopping experience with TierPoint

Build-A-Bear Partners with TierPoint to Modernize Online Shopping Experience

Build-A-Bear Workshop, a multi‑generational brand known for its in‑store, hands‑on “make your own” furry friend experience, faced a sudden shift to digital after COVID‑19 store closures in early 2020. Online demand surged (triple‑digit growth year over year) and the company wanted to recreate its emotional, interactive retail experience online rather than rely on a traditional 2D ecommerce catalog and cart.

Build‑A‑Bear partnered with Buzz3D, Nutanix, and TierPoint to build the Bear Builder 3D Workshop: a browser‑embedded, graphics‑intensive virtual store streamed via Nutanix Frame and hosted on a TierPoint‑customized private cloud with NVIDIA GPUs and high‑frequency CPUs, protected by TierPoint’s CleanIP security. The result is an immersive, device‑agnostic shopping experience that reproduces in‑store interactions, improves engagement, eases management burden on Build‑A‑Bear’s IT team, and is expected to attract and grow the company’s digital customer base.

Build-A-Bear

Mike Early

Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer