A bull market in bears
The teddy bear first went on sale on Feb. 15, 1903 in the Brooklyn shop of Morris Mitchom. The toy was originally inspired by President (and all-around manly man) Theodore Roosevelt, who had scored points in the press several months earlier after displaying compassion for a bear presented to him as an “easy kill” during a hunting trip. Mitchom asked the President’s permission to advertise his stuffed bears as Teddy bears, and after gaining Roosevelt’s blessing, the toys went in the shop window on Feb. 15 to attract curious passerby.
The bears quickly caught on, and Mitchom created the Ideal Toy Company four years later to expand on his initial success. By that point, toymakers in both the U.S. and in Germany (where they had caught on independently) were cranking out bears to fulfill a huge upwelling of demand among the women and children of the country. The popularity of teddy bears soon inspired the creation of Winnie the Pooh, which is now one of The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS)‘s most valuable intellectual properties, generating more than $1 billion in estimated annual merchandise revenue.
Ideal grew to become the largest doll-maker in the U.S. during the early years of the Baby Boom and later went on to control lucrative toy properties like the magic eight-ball and the Rubik’s cube. After a number of mergers and acquisitions, Ideal is now part of Mattel, Inc. (NASDAQ:MAT) . Mitchom’s legacy is now carried out primarily by Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc (NYSE:BBW), the mall specialty store with approximately 400 retail outlets dedicated to customizing teddy bears.
Is an artificial diamond forever, too?
On Feb. 15, 1955, General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) became the first company to successfully produce an artificial diamond. Although the project was completed a day too late for boyfriends and husbands hunting for cut-rate Valentine’s Day jewelry, it nevertheless marked an impressive step forward in the merger of manufacturing and science. A New York Times feature on the achievement described the simulation of pressures “existing at a depth 240 miles below the surface of the earth,” which created industrial diamonds “now priced at $7,000 a pound [equal to $60,000 today]. … The achievement was hailed here today as ‘one of the landmarks in man’s search for knowledge about his world.'”
Man had been attempting to create artificial diamonds with no success for more than a century. With GE now standing alone in this new field of industrial production, it was largely free to dominate an industry that had previously been run almost exclusively by the De Beers diamond cartel. Over the subsequent decades, GE and De Beers staked out the leading positions in industrial diamonds. The two grew to control 80% of a $500 million annual enterprise, and their mastery of the industry all but forced the federal government to file antitrust charges against them in 1994. Accused of price-fixing collusion, GE quickly slipped out of the federal noose, and the case was thrown out after a five-week trial. De Beers, on the other hand, resisted prosecution for another decade before agreeing to plead guilty to price-fixing charges in 2004 in exchange for being allowed to enter the country once again.
The article 2 Innovative Breakthroughs and a Wild Month for the Dow originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Alex Planes.
Fool contributor Alex Planes has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Berkshire Hathaway, Mattel, and Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS). The Motley Fool owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway, General Electric Company, and Walt Disney.
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