Lines drawn for tween market- Celebrity designers tap into spending power

From Variety another current article (March 29, 2007) looking at the tween explosion. Excerpt below. Click on the title above to get to the full article which is full of relevant information for the project.

Lines drawn for tween market - Celebrity designers tap into spending power
By DIANE CLEHANE

Move over, baby boomers. Tweens are where it's at.
According to industry sources, there are approximately 25 million tweens -- kids between the ages of 7 and 14 -- in the United States who spend $50 billion a year. Other estimates report these kids influence another $200 billion in purchases.

That's a lot of T-shirts and lip gloss.

The phenomenon hasn't gone unnoticed by fashion companies and celebrities looking to tap into the buying power of the grammar- and middle-school set.

"The tween market explosion coincides with an explosion of edgier celebrity-driven fashion," says David Wolfe, creative director of the Doneger Group, a New York-based trend forecasting agency. "Because of the amount of coverage given to celebrity style in the magazines and on the Internet, tweens are following the trends like never before."

For years, there were relatively few stores like Limited Too catering to these fledgling fashionistas. These days, an increasing number of celebrity-driven tween lines are popping up to fuel the fashion frenzy.

However, it's hard to imagine any newcomer to the game coming close to the success Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have had with their megabrand.

Their company, Dualstar Entertainment Group, licenses a slew of products that includes books, straight-to-video movies and dolls. In 2001, the Olsens inked an exclusive deal to sell their clothing line, the Mary-kateandashley brand for girls 5-12 at Wal-Mart.

"They were doing it long before the word 'tween' even existed," says Dualstar's CEO Diane Reichenberger.