Childhood friends for life
Tambo Teddies are the special cuddly partners that Aussie kids cherish for life. Each bear is handmade with love by a member of the small team, making the teddies are individual as their makers.
“Each Tambo Teddy is individually handcrafted and has a unique number which is located on a woven tag sewn into their leg,” part-owner Alison Shaw says.
Made from the softest Australian and New Zealand sheepskins that the owners can find, the bear patterns are drawn up and cut out by hand, and then sewn on a machine called a cup seam overlocker.
Each sewer sews the complete bear, turns them out and stuffs them and then sews the neck up by hand. No two bears are ever the same, and there have been more than 66,000 made during the business’s lifeline.
“The bears are given a name which consists of a Tambo property alliterated with a Christian name,” Alison says.
“The bears’ numbers and names are all recorded plus who they go to live with, the town and the postcode. The bear records go back to 1992 and are handwritten in old exercise books; these days we record the bears in a digital online register.”
Tambo Teddies began back in 1992, with the first bears sold at a Charleville market in February 1993.
The birth year of Tambo Teddies was in the midst of a crippling drought and stockpile of wool, which drove the price of wool and sheep down to virtually nothing.
Reliant on the wool industry with towns full of shearing teams, the Outback was suffering with properties and people leaving the sheep and shearing industry en masse – leading to dying towns and lack of work.
“The government came through the west holding seminars to identify new economic development opportunities,” Alison says.
“Three ladies in Tambo came up with the idea of creating sheepskin teddy bears to help the farmers, the wool industry and create some tourism interest for Tambo.”
Fast-forward to 2014, and Alison took over the business with partner Tammy Johnson.
The business had historically been a smallscale operation, the processes were manual and slow, and the pair had to find ways to increase production and encourage staff to stick around in a small town.
In 2019, they turned to Toowoomba, a bigger town and major migrant resettlement community 800 kilometres down the road, where they set up a regional sewing hub employing Syrian refugees.
“It’s been a lovely win-win story, actually,” Alison says.
“Teddies started during a time of adversity, and these guys have been displaced, but they’ve got the skills we need.”
Scaling up a cottage industry without losing its essence has been a challenge. However, to this day, each bear is still made by one person from start to finish and no two look exactly the same. Every Tambo Teddy is special, they all have their own personality, are soft, cuddly, and totally unique.
Next year, Tambo Teddies will be celebrating 30 years of creating teddy bear friends for both the young and the young at heart. There will be a major Teddy Bears Picnic in Tambo to celebrate, so keep an eye on Tambo Teddies social media for more information closer to the date.