The founder's elephant returns to the centre
In January 2020 Steiff opens its 140-year jubilee with a campaign that routes the anniversary through the brand's original product rather than through its most famous one. The Elefäntle, the small felt elephant pincushion that Margarete Steiff first sold from her workshop in Giengen an der Brenz in 1880, becomes the dedicated bildmarke for the jubilee year. Every piece in the anniversary collection carries a circular stamp reading 140 Jahre Steiff with the elephant silhouette as its centrepiece, and the figure is also used across all communications surfaces, from the corporate landing page to the Spielwarenmesse trade booth in Nuremberg, where the jubilee year is publicly opened on 29 January 2020.
The narrative the brand uses
The headline for the jubilee year is a single line attributed to Margarete Steiff, Wer an sich selbst glaubt, ist frei, which translates as those who believe in themselves are free. The line repositions the company's origin story around the founder's biography. Margarete Steiff contracted polio as a child, used a wheelchair through adult life, and built the business from the workshop of her parental home with her sister Pauline and later her brother Fritz. The 140-year narrative routes those biographical facts through the brand's editorial surfaces and frames the original Elefäntle as the proof of the founder's argument rather than as a charming archive detail. The brand therefore replaces the standard anniversary structure, which usually retells the product timeline, with a personal narrative anchored on a single founder figure.
The Elefäntle as bildmarke
The dedicated 140 Jahre Steiff stamp uses a stylised silhouette of the original Elefäntle drawn from the company archive. The mark sits inside a circle and reads as a quality seal applied to every anniversary piece. The decision to use the elephant rather than the teddy bear, the brand's commercial centrepiece, is the strategic move of the jubilee. The bear stands for the brand's commercial trajectory from 1902 onward. The elephant stands for the brand's existence before that trajectory began. Anchoring the jubilee on the elephant therefore allows the company to celebrate 140 years without subordinating the entire history to the teddy bear, and reserves the bear for the separate 120-year teddy anniversary that the brand celebrates two years later with the 2022 Peter Schmidt Group identity work.
The 1,880-piece edition logic
Every piece in the Jubiläumskollektion is limited to 1,880 units worldwide, with the number a direct reference to the founding year 1880. The mechanic plugs the anniversary into the brand's existing trademark architecture. The Knopf im Ohr metal button registered in 1904 sits on each anniversary bear and animal in the left ear. The 1953 ear tag colour code identifies the figures as limited edition pieces with the white tag and red lettering. The 1980 Replica programme supplies the manufacturing approach for the archive style pieces in the line. The result is an anniversary that does not require any new trademark mechanism. The 140-year identity therefore sits on the brand's existing infrastructure and uses the limited edition number as the only new variable.
The collection
The anniversary collection covers several categories of the catalogue. The Elefäntle itself returns in multiple sizes, in cream and white plush, including a 10 centimetre rattle version. The Joseph Grizzly Bear, a substantial mohair figure, anchors the bear segment. The collection extends to a teddy bear range in the trademark cinnamon mohair, several animal pieces drawn from the regular catalogue redressed with the anniversary stamp, and a small number of replica style archive pieces. The pricing across the range mirrors the brand's normal price ladder, from the rattle Elefäntle in the gift segment to the mohair archive pieces in the collector segment. The anniversary stamp therefore travels across the entire catalogue rather than living in a single price tier.
Wir sind Steiff
The activation around the jubilee runs under the title Wir sind Steiff, which translates as We are Steiff. The campaign rolls out a sweepstake mechanic that invites consumers, employees and retailers to participate in the anniversary year through a series of online and in store actions. The format combines a visit driver for the Steiff Museum, opened in 2005 in Giengen an der Brenz, with a collector engagement programme run through the Steiff Club, founded in 1992. The activation reads as a deliberately broad gesture, intended to thread the anniversary through every audience the brand maintains, rather than as a campaign optimised for a single segment.
The brand consequence
The 140-year jubilee restores the founder figure to the brand's commercial surface after several decades in which the teddy bear had carried the marketing argument almost on its own. The campaign supplies the brand's official answer to a question that heritage manufacturers in their fourteenth decade have to answer, namely how to celebrate longevity without making the founder figure feel decorative. Steiff's answer in 2020 is to put the founder's pincushion at the centre of the visual system and to attach a personal narrative to it, then to let the rest of the brand architecture run unchanged underneath. The decision sets up the next two years of communication. The 120-year teddy bear identity follows in May 2022, the Peter Schmidt Group bear head replaces the older bildmarke, and the brand returns to its commercial centrepiece. The 140-year campaign therefore functions as the founder pause before the brand pivots back to its bear.
