Merchandising for the Teen Market-Without Being "SO last week"

As a follow-up to last issue’s overview of the exploding youth furniture market, here are six simple, practical ideas for merchandising to teens.

Want to merchandise your sales floor to attract the exploding youth furniture market? Visit Jordan’s Furniture for inspiration and ideas. This Top 100 furniture giant recently opened a 250,000 square foot complex that includes an IMAX theater, a luncheonette, a “liquid fireworks” show, an indoor trapeze school, and three leased stores-within-a-store. What is drawing the crowds and overfilling its enormous parking lot, however, is Beantown, an area at the front of the store that recreates Boston landmarks with jelly beans. A lot of jelly beans. 25 million jelly beans. 30 tons of jelly beans.

Need more inspiration? Venture south to Jackson, Miss., and visit Miskelly Furniture. A recent store expansion grew its youth furniture department from 4,000 square feet to over 6,000 square feet. At Miskelly, teenagers can shoot hoops in the sports area, have autographs signed by professional athletes and even take in a movie in the store’s home theater section.

Jordan’s and Miskelly are not alone in the current rush to serve one of the fastest growing consumer segments: teenagers. “We know that decorating is an area that teens are very interested in,” confirms Michael Wood, vice president of Teenage Research Unlimited, the leading researcher of American teens’ trends, lifestyles, and consumer behaviors. “The age group, 12-19, now 33 million strong, will continue to grow through 2010 to 35 million and will be a hot market for years to come.”

But despite teens’ clear interest in decorating and their well-padded wallets, many retailers hesitate to venture into this notoriously fickle market, where trends come and go faster than you can say “beanie baby.” Teens are notorious for having new ideas of what’s cool every week. Industry and culture specialists predict that the trendy nature of this market is not going to change. In fact, because youth use technology like instant messenger and the internet, they predict that future trends will come and go more quickly than ever.

Let’s face it. Retailers fear the experience of John McConnell at Bean Bag and Futon Factory. McConnell carries a full line of youth furniture, including futons, bean bags and foam furniture, and has watched his sales climb over 15 percent this summer. But, he says, “I picked up some fun, innovative lamps for the store…Teens came in, laughed at them, loved them but didn’t buy them! I can’t figure out why they are not moving.” He figures he’ll just leave it to the manufacturers, who invest lots of time and resources figuring out what teens will buy. He looks to his suppliers to stay current with trends.

McConnell makes a point that resonates with many retailers who do not have the time and the resources to chase teenage trends. Large retailers with specialized buyers have the resources to keep ahead of trends and merchandise their sales floors accordingly, but what can mom and pop do to get in on this expanding youth furniture market? Lots. And here are six simple, practical ideas even the smallest retailer can use to market futon and lifestyle furniture to teens.

Advertise using a two-pronged approach. Savvy retailers make their product known to both teenagers and their moms. Marketing to teens can be tricky because while today’s teens have refined and sophisticated tastes, their parents still hold the purse strings. “I advertise on MTV because teens watch it, and also on Lifetime, Women’s Entertainment channel and other cable stations that moms watch because their kids bug them,” explains McConnell.

Accessorize to the max. Accessories may be small items, but they play a big role in creating the hip and edgy space popular with today’s young consumers. “We go all out [on accessories] and get lots of comments. They make the whole room and work to sell the furniture,” explains Dana Caskey, accessories buyer for Miskelly. Walls in its 6,500 square foot youth department are decked out with canvas artwork from Funky Finds whose bright colors and pansies adorn girls’ vignettes. Creative Images’ extreme sports traffic signs get the guys’ attention. “We also go with the Company Store. One (bedding) set does the whole room and makes a broad statement,” said Caskey. Basically, it’s gotta be what’s “hot, fun and comfortable.”

Smaller retailers can dress futons to make a youth-oriented statement in a teen gallery vignette with covers from leading manufacturers. Look for Omni Softgoods’ energized, polka dot “Verve” for a girl’s display and hip “Suede Hickory” for male appeal. Beach and surf themes are popular with today’s teenagers, and both CottonBelle and SIS have “Flip Flop” fabrics that would set a youthful tone for an entire room.

Sometimes surprisingly simple things can function as accessories with an impact. Consider placing popular teen magazines on end tables and bookcases in youth vignettes. The most popular magazines for girls, according to Teenage Research Unlimited, are Seventeen, Teen People and YM. Guys reportedly favor Sports Illustrated, ESPN the Magazine and GamePro. These magazines help make a store a comfortable environment that teenagers can relate to.

Use lighting to create a hip environment. Leading teen-oriented retailers have at least this in common: they all use lighting to deliberately create an environment. They realize how a store’s environment can ring up big sales, especially when marketing to teenagers.

Consider Hot Topic, a teen specialty store that features T-shirts and body jewelry for punk and gothic teenagers. Hot Topic uses red lighting to create a dark, den-like, ‘naughty’ store environment. Also consider Abercrombie & Fitch, which sells clothes for the preppy set. Abercrombie uses minimal ambient lighting–you can’t really even see inside the store from outside–and adds a generous helping of spot and track lighting. Crank up loud dance music, and Abercrombie creates a hip, club-like atmosphere.
On the other hand, national tween clothing store Limited Too also uses lighting to market to teens, but for a different effect. Colors on the store’s soffit “pop” and then vanish throughout an assortment of pre-programmed color-changing shows, to the delight of the stores’ trendsetting young customers. Through its use of bright lights, bold colors and dramatic designs, Limited Too creates an environment full of energy and motion.

Hot Topic, Abercrombie & Fitch and Limited Too pay big money for professional lighting designers to create these sophisticated environments. But even smaller retailers can adapt some of these ideas to create their own attitude or energy. Consider creating a unique environment within a teen gallery by altering the balance between ambient and spot lighting or by experimenting with different types of bulbs.

Entertain your way to sales. The “entertainmentization of retailing” is looking to be one of the major trends in retail trade in the twenty-first century, according to Ira Mayer, president of EPM Communications. While you may not be able to afford to entertain customers as at Miskelly or Jordan’s with theaters, jelly bean buildings and basketball hoops, many possibilities exist on a less elaborate scale.

To entertain the teen category on the cheap, consider setting a rented arcade game in part of a teen gallery and let young customers play for free. Even less expensive, set up an Xbox or Play Station with the coolest, newest video game.

Another idea sure to create a buzz and spread the word about your store’s youth product line is to create a spin-off of the popular teen cable show Knock First. Have teens and tweens enter (and perhaps submit a photo of themselves in their bedroom) to win a 24-hour room makeover with merchandise and accessories from your store. This may sound pricey, even if you set the dollar limit, but remember that this giveaway will create a teen customer database that will be worth its weight in gold. This information can set the stage for future youth-oriented promotions.

Go techno. Today’s kids have grown up surrounded by voice mail, instant messenger, mp3 players and video games. Technology and its equipment have a huge presence in their bedrooms. Over 65 percent of today’s teens have TVs in their bedrooms, and 40 percent have video game equipment in their bedrooms. Help them visualize the placement of these electronics in their bedrooms with liberal use of simulated electronics, such as Box Props, in vignettes geared toward teens and tweens.

Go one step further and incorporate technology into your merchandising. Savvy retailers can put teens’ fluency with technology to work by setting up an interactive design kiosk on their sales floors. Here, parents and their kids can use computerized design programs and CD-ROMs to help arrange furniture and use color in their bedrooms. Final layouts, along with pricing, product and delivery information, can be printed for customers to take home.

Tell stories with color. A great piece of advice from Dana Caskey is to use color rather than theme to make a statement within a room or vignette. That way, “we don’t back ourselves into a corner” and we are much more able to “work in and out of what’s hot,” she explains. A current teen vignette at Miskelly features fabulously bright grape walls (that have some style staying power) accessorized with polka dots and furry and fuzzy elements (that may not be very hip next season).

How not to be, like, so last week
Retailers targeting the youth market are aware of both the need and the challenge of staying on top of what’s hot in the world of teenagers. There are many resources even the smallest retailer with the least amount of time can use to stay abreast of teen preferences.

Want to know what’s the latest rage? Take your cue from the source. Subscribe to teen magazines such as Seventeen, TeenVogue and CosmoGirl. These are the books your teenage customers are looking at and the source of many of their decorating dreams and ideas. You can also watch the cable TV shows that both mirror and create hot teen trends. Try Trading Spaces, MTV’s Crib and Knock First.

Easier still, stay current by visiting the websites of industry leaders. Pottery Barn has been the first company to aggressively target the teen category, and their interactive website, pbteen.com, is packed with the market’s newest, coolest and hippest. See lots of pom-poms? Try them as accessories on your sales floor. Notice the colors of the walls in their vignettes and use them to make a statement for your collection.

Another great source of what’s hot that’s just a mouse-click away is delias.com. Delia’s began selling to the teen home decorating market even before Pottery Barn. Their “Roomware” collection of frames, bedding and knick-knacks is full of up-to-the-moment looks.

Easiest of all, notice the colors and patterns of what teens are wearing. The clothing trends of today are the home decorating trends of tomorrow. Holly Hutson, merchandising manager for Rooms to Go Kids, says she keeps up with trends by “looking at stores that kids frequent–especially clothing stores–to see what colors are hot and to stay ahead of the trends.”

What’s Hot and What’s Not
To get started, here are some of the latest trends among teenage girls. Look for accessories with any kind of embellishments. Lamps, picture frames and pillows with edgings such as beading, fringe or pom-poms are very popular, as are furry pillows and shag carpets. Top colors for girls’ vignettes are bright grape purple, lime green, hot pink.

Today’s teenage guys are favoring locker-style steel furniture and any other items with a chrome finish. Popular themes are extreme sports, skateboarding and surfing. Top colors for a guy’s space are the color combination orange/black/red, and also purple paired with khaki and camouflage.

There you have it. But one warning: these trends may expire at midnight tonight. FL