GenDigital

Counterintuitive Approach: Hip Streetwear Retailer Metropark Files For Public Offering

This definitely caught my eye. How about this for bucking against the grain of an overall retail environment that shall we say...is currently operating in the doldrums? The retailer is Metropark, the brainchild child Orval Madden whose Hot Topic was once the love of emo tots nationwide. Metropark is capitalizing on targeting what they consider to be an undeserved demographic segment (no argument here): 20 to 35 year olds with hipster street brands like Affliction and Obey, among other premium labels. They've grown like a weed in the past couple of years and now have 43 stores, 14 of which are in the hipster fiefdom of California. I had some time to kill before a meeting and ended up in the Metropark store in Irvine not so long ago. I've got to tell you, with their whole shtick, they're definitely on to something. It's not so much the blaring music you'd find at A&F, but it's the whole package--a sorta hybrid of music and entertainment and the fashion items that go along with it. Although they say it's the 20 to 35 year olds they're really after, it looked like many of the shoppers in the Irvine location were no older than 17, of course it's California, so they were actually probably 15 or 16. You could see this type of environment working really well in markets around NYC, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Portland, Seattle and pretty much anywhere in So Cal. I'd think they probably veer away from conservative New England and the interior U.S. Regardless of what I think, it's great to see someone targeting a younger demographic in an industry that has been taking a beating really perform. You'd also have to think Metropark can make a splash in international hipster markets a la Tokyo, London etc. with their new found capital from their offering. We'll see...

Retail Trendspotting: Look To The West For Clues Of What's To Come

It's our heartfelt belief that a majority of youth fashion and retail-related trends originate on the west coast--specifically the Los Angeles market. Expanding on that point, there's no better place to take the pulse of America's young shoppers than Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade, which is home to dozens of retailers. In the most unscientific of methods, simply stroll up and down the picturesque promenade any early evening and weave yourself between the throngs of tourists to follow the retail-driven paths of the local shoppers. We did this four times this week with the hope of understanding which retailers were drawing in the tastemaker crowd. Ideally, we were not looking for browsers, we were looking for actual shoppers with wallets out and multiple bags in hand. Any theory that Forever 21 had hit a peak last year was quickly nullified--the Forever 21 outpost in the promenade was packed every night with buyers, not just browsers. I must be getting a little old because it took me a good five to ten minutes to block out the absolutely glaring music coming out of the speakers in Abercrombie & Fitch before I could get a sense of the crowd. Overall, though I would have to say the A&F crowd was skewed slightly on the side of tourists (who were buying for the most part) rather than local young people. Without a doubt the most crowded store each night was the Apple store. Teens and twenty somethings were snapping up iPod Touches faster than you could say blueberry pancakes while several people were discussing the new soon to be released version of the iPhone with store staffers. It was a completely different story 50 feet down the street at the Helio outpost. Over the course of four separate evenings, I saw no more than five people in the store--and most of the time there were more employees manning the floor than shoppers in the store. Yikes. Back to clothing...American Eagle has a sizable piece of real estate, but again, we saw more tourists in there night in and night out than locals. Many of the tourists booked straight towards AE's relatively new undergarment aerie line which is competing head to head with Victoria's Secret's Pink line. Besides Forever 21, the highest concentration of local shoppers were found at Urban Outfitters, which by no small coincidence has quickly become one of the more popular specialty outposts for college students nationally over the past year and a half. Other little tidbits of info--the Levi's store was practically empty each night--the audience is still about their premium denim, while the Diesel store was humming at the cash register. There was a longer line at the tiny McDonald's stand than many of the local fast food joints every night. Why is that tourists, many of whom probably traveled thousands of miles, prefer the golden arches to prized local fare like overstuffed burritos and quarter pound burgers from Fatburger is beyond me, but whatever. Anyway, it was great to see so many people walking around with multiple bags of merchandise as the economic doom and gloom headlines continue to spew out on a daily basis. Happy Friday!

Mag Publisher Bauer Targets Younger Online Set With 4Tnz Site

Bauer Publishing, home of youth-targeted magazine titles like J-14 and Twist, among others, has recently launched a new standalone site called affectionately: 4tnz.com. The site offers the usual and commonplace mix of videos, photos and quizzes for the teen set. Of course, users need to be at least 13 years of age to register for the site, which probably cuts out about half of the target audience they reach through their magazine titles. While the site is cute in nature, nothing comes off as totally unique and awe inspiring enough to get teens to switch over from using Facebook or MySpace...Facebook continues to have the most of the momentum as it recently over took MySpace as the top social networking site among the teen audience based on our latest wave of Tween & Teen Lifestyle. The teen social networking space, not unlike anything else in the online space is all about scale. The company hopes to achieve scale by frequently updating its original offerings, I think they would have a better chance of jumping the shark if there was a casual or multi player game element included within their offerings since that seems to be thing right now that gets teens talking and gets them coming back.

The Latest Math on GTA IV

Happy Friday. The parent company of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Take Two Interactive came out with their latest quarterly report yesterday, which included sales data through May 31 for the latest installment: GTA IV. In a word: unreal. Since the release of GTA IV on April 29, the company has sold a whopping 8.5 million copies which amounts more than a quarter a million a day...let me say that again...a quarter million (actually it's more like 257,576) copies of GTA IV sold every single day since the release. That's nuts. It's no wonder why the company reported net income of $98.2 million reversing a loss $51.2 million posted a year earlier. In essence the video game industry is quite similar the move studio business. One blockbuster new release or DVD release can make or break a quarter, or sometimes even a year. As we get ready to put out the Q2 wave of our Top Ten List report, I have to think that GTA IV will come in number one across the board for teens and college students in the video games over taking Q1 number one Halo 3.

Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report Highlights Part Five: Retail & Shopping

Ok, last but certainly not least, let's take a look at some of the shopping and retail-related findings from Tween &Teen Lifestyle. Starting with spending, during a typical month teens spend an average of $135 across nine product categories. Nearly half of their spending goes towards clothing and accessories. Clearly, spending habits among teens vary considerably by age, geographic location and job status. If we take a look at just the 16 and 17 year-old teens who have a part-time job where they put in a minimum of 5 hours per week, their spending across the same nine categories jumps sharply to $264 a month which is just about double the average among all teens and about 45% higher than the average for all 16 and 17 year-olds. Switching gears to tween spending, honestly, not that exciting, it's purely  a parental decision event 9 out of 10 times. The only thing that is getting relatively interesting is the relative/grandparent factor which has been increasing of late, meaning there are an increasing number of tweens nationwide who are receiving funds (most of which end up turning into discretionary dollars) from their baby boomer grandparents on a greater frequency--more than four times a year. Don't get too excited though, we usually looking at amounts in the range of $25 to $50 a hit or about $150 to $200 annually. For tweens, it's all about candy, gum and games...last I checked, $200 buys a lot of candy. On the retail front, you'll be most likely to find a teen if you visit a discount mass retailer like a Target or Wal-Mart, a supermarket, a drugstore or specialty retailer, while you'll be most likely to find a tween shopping at a supermarket as well as a discount mass retailer and much farther down the list--a drugstore and a warehouse club like Sam's Club or Costco. No MBA required to tell which group is shopping with a parent most of the time. The most visited specialty clothing retailer among teen females is Victoria's Secret followed closely by Hollister while teen males visit American Eagle Outfitters more often than any other specialty retailer followed by Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister. Not as sexy or risque for the tweens. This is part I don't get--you might remember reading a release from Old Navy that came out a couple a months ago about how they want to evolve the brand into more of a destination for working women in their 20s and 30s, I actually think we posted something about it saying why would they do such a thing if their model wasn't broken. So I say again, why the heck would they do this and alienate such a powerful (fast growing too) shopping segment in tweens and their parents. Old Navy, for both tween boys and girls, remains the most shopped at specialty clothing retailer by a considerable margin...well ahead of second place The Gap and third place Aeropostale by about 17 share points. Obviously we must be missing something, because it doesn't make any sense to us. Ok, let's wrap this up...if you ask a teen what's the coolest in trendiest specialty retailer, more often than not the response you'll receive back is Abercrombie & Fitch which is still to certain extent an aspirational brand for the teen market and really more of a high trafficked brand for the college aged market. Ask the same question to a tween and the response you'll receive is...yeah, Old Navy. Who knows, may be they will shift their strategy back to the kids and parents market as their core target...That's all for now.

Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report Highlights Part Four: Entertainment & Pop Culture

Here's a snippet of some of the entertainment and popular culture-related topics covered in our latest wave of Tween & Teen Lifestyle. First though, I need to take a few steps back and clarify a few things based on a couple of email inquiries I received this week. The Tween & Teen Lifestyle Report, released on an semi-annual basis, is produced by Youth Trends. The full report along with corresponding customized analysis and a few other value-added items is available exclusively on a subscription basis, as our all other Youth Trends research reports. As we've done several times previously, we use this blog to highlight findings from recently released Youth Trends reports, but that's really about it...we don't use this blog as a platform to release a full version of any our reports, nor do we provide any gratis versions of Youth Trends Lifestyle Reports. Now that we're on all on the same page, let's get back to some highlights from the winter '08 wave of Tween & Teen Lifestyle. Today I'm looking at some of the entertainment and pop culture data points beginning with movie attendance. During a typical month teens see an average of 1.8 movies (in a movie theater) while tweens see an an average of 1.3. Tween attendance is consistent with a year ago, while the average number of movies teens see in a typical month has increased slightly from 1.5 movies a year ago. The recent spate of youth-targeted fare including led by releases like Iron Man is the cause of the slight bump in attendance over the past year. The most appealing move genres for teens are action/adventure titles followed closely by comedy titles while tweens prefer comedy titles most often followed by animated features and action/adventure. For the third straight year, Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp retains the title as the most popular Hollywood celebrity among teen and tween females. Funny man Adam Sandler is tops among the boys followed closely by the two Will's--Will Smith and Will Ferrell. I probably don't have to tell you who the most popular female celebrity is among the teen females..right? Yes, it's Miley Cyrus, followed by Reese Witherspoon, Keira Knightley and Amanda Bynes. The top female celeb among the boys is Jessica Alba for the second straight year followed by Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale of High School Musical fame and Alicia Keys. Tomorrow, I'll wrap up the highlight posts looking at the retail and shopping category.

Tween & Teen Lifestyle Highlights Part Three: What's Hot

Ok, let's jump into this third installment of Tween & Teen Lifestyle report highlights by looking at what the audience thinks is cool...right now. We usually see a wide disparity as to what teens think is cool compared to what the tweens think is cool. This wave is really no exception. As a general rule of thumb, anytime we see a certain item score greater 60% t0 68% we deem it relatively ubiquitous. In terms of anticipating future trends, we like to see items come in with a score of 10% to 15% in the first wave and make sizable jump to 30% to 35% in the next wave. Chances are, come the third wave (which is essentially 18 months later), the item will register somewhere between 50% to 70%. Using this working theory on trend identification we'd been able to identify a wide range of items ranging from no brainers like the Wii all the way to more category-specific trends like ringtone downloading a good six to twelve months before everyone starts talking about them. So with all of that said, what's the coolest thing in the world right now for teens? If you said text messaging, then you're right on. Almost all teens (96%) said text messaging was hot right now. Beyond text messaging, 91% of teens said Apple iPods were hot right now. Last year teens had iPods as their number one hot item of the moment. Talk about growth--70% of teens said the Wii was hot right now up from 54% last year and only 21% 18 months ago. Yup, it didn't take a rocket scientist with a Harvard MBA to see this one coming. One thing that surprised us a bit was the iPhone. Yes, we thought teens would give it rather high ratings somewhere between 40% and 50%, but to tell you the truth, the fact that it came in at 75% to land in the fourth spot on the hot list was a surprise. The hottest thing for tweens right now are Apple iPods (92%) followed by the Wii (81%) the DS or DS Lite (77%), downloading music (also 77%) and get ready for this...drum roll please...caring about the environment (71%). After all is said and done, may be the youth of the world will actually end up saving us all. Tomorrow I'll go over some of the latest entertainment and celebrity trends.

Tween & Teen Lifestyle Highlights: Part Two

In part two we're taking a look at Internet and online-related trends among tweens and teens. Certainly, Internet access is a non-issue for this audience with nearly nine in ten having access at home and more than nine at ten having access at school. That said, if you take a look at time spent online in a typical week during the school year, you'll see that teens tend to spend much more time online compared to tweens...and why is that? Very simple: social networking sites. In typical week during the school year, teens spend 12.5 hours online while tweens spend only 6.4 hours. The key shift among teen consumption habits is the transition to Facebook from MySpace. Somewhat akin to "American Idol burn out" much of the teen audience has grown tired with MySpace and has moved on to Facebook in the past six months. Now, interestingly enough, with the massive amount attention given to all of these virtual world communities tailor made for kids, truth be told, only a couple are even on their radar--not surprising to us, but needs to be reinforced. It doesn't take a Harvard MBA or cultural anthropologist to figure out the top site tweens visit--it's still Webkinz among both tween boys and tween girls. Neopets, owned by Viacom's interactive unit as well as Nick.com, the online companion to the cable network continue to put in strong year over year performances. Disney's acquisition of Club Penguin last year has done little so far in terms of deeper popularity, the site remains in third place among tween girls and actually dropped from 11th place to 13th place among tween boys since last summer. Another gaming site owned by Viacom to watch out for is AddictingGames, which is fast becoming the top casual gaming site among all youth, not just the kids and teens.