Overview

"""Some things, like Concorde and the Jaguar XK 120, look right from the very beginning. Shirley's Paddington Bear looked right from the word go. It was created with love and it was born with that indefinable something known as star quality.""- Michael Bond, author of the Paddington Bear stories'Bearly Believable' is the hilarious story of how Shirley Clarkson grew her company, Gabrielle Designs, from a tiny spare-room business selling tea cosies in Doncaster into an international business shipping Paddington Bears all over the world ...and then watched it collapse.With no business experience, no capital, and just GBP100 of backing, Shirley came up with the original - now classic - Paddington design of hat, raincoat and wellies. Manufacturing from a collection of ramshackle farm buildings, she was hit by a wave of orders from retailers, as the world went Paddington-crazy. From Tokyo to Sydney to San Francisco, everybody was growling for Paddington Bears.As sales skyrocketed, Shirley and her husband Eddie experienced the giddy feeling of success, then the stresses of growth. Turnover leapt to a million a year, Gabrielle Designs was hailed as a British success story, and Shirley was invited to meet the Queen at Doncaster Mansion House. Meanwhile, the stormclouds gathered. The workforce went on strike, 50,000 bears had to be recalled because of faulty eyes, Eddie was ill in bed for a year, and the pipes at the factory burst. Shirley employed a professional manager to rescue the situation - who turned out to be illiterate, dishonest, and incompetent. The '70s moved on, the craze faded, and the tide went out on Paddington as fast as it had come in.Shirley tells her rollercoaster story with warmth, modesty and a blunt Yorkshire wit. For fans of Paddington her book provides a delightful insight into how a simple bear became a worldwide icon; for students of business, it provides lessons in how to create a business and, more particularly, how not to run one; for those who appreciate tales of triumph and adversity, it is packed with more ups and downs than Paddington's paw in a jar of marmalade."

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9781905641727

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A heart-warming, inspirational tale of a woman trying to run a business while having me as a son - Jeremy Clarkson heart-warming and hilarious - The Offical Paddington Bear Website

Author Information

Shirley Clarkson is a 73-year-old tour-de-force who continues to live life to the full. As well as creating the physical Paddington Bear from Michael Bond's stories, she also produced TV presenter Jeremy and corporate lawyer Joanna who, in turn, have provided Shirley with five grandchildren. Her family, friends, and tennis are now Shirley's greatest sources of pleasure.

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