Build-A-Bear refuses Washington teen’s request to name stuffed bear ‘Charlie Kirk’

Evi McCormick, 16, told KING 5 News that she and her friends stopped by the store in the Southcenter Mall in Tukwila on Friday to create custom teddy bears, following a trend she’d seen on TikTok. But when she tried to name her bear after Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, who was assassinated last month, she said a store employee refused.

“I was just mesmerized and captivated that he could speak with such elegance,” McCormick said of Kirk. “He was a role model.”

According to McCormick, when she finished making her bear, the employee at the register rejected the name and refused to issue the traditional Build-A-Bear birth certificate. “She just didn’t agree with it. She didn’t support it and she told me, ‘We’re not doing this,’ folded it up in a force and threw it away,” McCormick said. Upset, she handed her payment card to her friend and walked away.

“It definitely made us all very uncomfortable,” said Kailie Lang, one of McCormick’s friends who witnessed the exchange.

When KING 5 visited the store, a manager declined to comment and directed questions to corporate headquarters, but a Build-A-Bear customer service representative later told the outlet that “the case is being handled internally by the appropriate department.”

McCormick’s mother, Amber, said she called the company’s corporate office and spent 45 minutes on the phone. She said the company initially offered a $20 gift card for the poor customer experience. Days later, she received a follow-up call with an apology. According to Amber McCormick, Build-A-Bear said the incident should not have happened and promised to retrain employees in the Seattle area and nationwide to keep politics out of the workplace.

“She said that their goal is to try to prevent this sort of situation from happening to anybody else,” Amber McCormick said.

A sign posted inside the Tukwila store reminds customers not to use “indecent or distasteful” names for their stuffed animals. McCormick said she was not trying to start a political confrontation; she simply wanted to honor someone she admired.

“It wasn’t political until she made it that way,” she said.