What does the famous American president Theodore Roosevelt have to do with the teddy bear? It’s quite simple: he gave it its name. The teddy bear was invented by the Steiff Company in Giengen an der Brenz, between Ulm and Heidenheim. The company made it world-famous, bringing joy to millions of children across the globe. The Steiff trademark and guarantee of quality is the button in the teddy bear’s ear, early versions of which showed the image of an elephant. That was the very first animal created by the company’s charismatic founder Margarete Steiff. A museum in Giengen recalls this fact. For this year’s World Cup there is of course a footballer teddy bear in black-and-white footballing strip.

213,720 euros – that was the world-record price paid six years ago at an auction in Monaco for a 45cm tall “Louis Vuitton” teddy bear. The fascination with teddy bears is never-ending. But that wasn’t the way it looked at the very start. When the Steiff Company decided to manufacture the expensively-produced bears in 1902, it was taking an enormous financial risk. There had never been anything like it: a soft toy animal made of plush that could move its arms and legs.

So when Margarete Steiff and her nephew Richard took their “newfangled” bears to the Leipzig Toy Fair in 1902, the result was predictable – almost. Margarete and Richard were about to pack their bears away when an American bought up their whole stock – 3,000 bears. At that time the bear’s ‘name’ was “55PB” – 55 for its height in centimeters, P for plush, and B for the German word ‘beweglich’, meaning ‘movable’. In 1906 the company produced nearly a million bears – a spectacular quantity for the time. The ‘teddy’ part of its name came from no less a person than former president Theodore Roosevelt, known to everyone as “Teddy“. He was an enthusiastic bear hunter. That was why political cartoonist Clifford Berryman included a small bear in his Roosevelt cartoons.

It’s difficult to imagine a more elaborate process than that adopted in the manufacture of a Steiff animal – whether bear or anything else. The “toy designer” first studies an animal’s movements in the zoo. Then screen-printing stencils are produced from drawings, the material dyed to the right color and the pieces sewn together. The animals are stuffed with synthetic wadding or foam cuttings. Then the detail work begins: in the majority of the classic animals the eyes, nose, claws and whiskers are stitched by hand. But this detailed painstaking work is precisely what gives the products their quality. The complete process from initial idea to series production normally takes a year.

The Steiffs were quick to realize the need to protect themselves against the copies which soon appeared on the market. They came up with the idea of the now-famous “button in the ear”, some of which have an embossed image of an elephant. The button remains the guarantee of the genuine article. The elephant was in fact the first animal produced by Margarete Steiff, in 1880. Today, sales of all 800 or so different animals in the Steiff range stand at around 1.5 million per year.

The remarkable founder of the company, Margarete Steiff (1847-1909), triumphed over a number of difficult obstacles. As a woman and founder of a company, she caused a stir in the male-dominated commercial world of the late nineteenth century. Even more remarkably, she was able to win through despite the handicap of an incurable illness: stricken by polio at the age of eighteen months, she was confined to a wheelchair from the age of two. The handicap only strengthened her will. She remained always a social-minded entrepreneur towards her employees. The story of her life was turned into a TV movie in 2005.