Younger Savvy Consumers, You Gotta Have a Plan - Hook 'em Young and Keep 'em

Story Excerpt from USA Today online, Photos by USA TODAY (Click on above title for Full Article)

Hooking young customers early, and keeping them on the line
Tween girls are the core of Bonne Bell's customer base, but the makeup and skin-care company works hard to attract girls as young as 4 and to keep them. Here's how:


Kaela Fisch, 5, is holding flavored Lip Smacker lip balm.
4 to 6
Pre-tween girls are introduced to makeup with hundreds of Bonne Bell Lip Smacker lip balm flavors. Some start collections.


Alyssa Tsukamoto, 9, holds Lip Smacker lip gloss.
7 to 10
As they enter the tween years, girls become adept at using a lip gloss wand. For them, Bonne Bell sells glossy and often shimmery Lip Smacker lip glosses.


Elizabeth Dolan, 11, with tinted lip gloss.
11 to 13
Color becomes popular as older tweens and younger teens steer toward tinted lip balms and glosses. Bonne Bell's Pinky Lip Smacker line includes lip and nail products.


Shadi Jackson, 17, has liquid lipstick.
14 to 18 and beyond
More mature flavors such as mocha and tart berries, water-inspired and vitamin-enriched glosses and bronzers are geared to teens and young women into their 20s.

Some other tween girl traits:

•They're driven by imitation. Tweens want to look like each other but be able to call looks their own, says retail consultant Laura Evans, whose clients include Reebok and Express. Retailers that offer a lot of similar apparel — layers of shirts in a variety of colors — tend to be the most popular. Hilary Bell, executive vice president for strategy for Bonne Bell, says almost every young girl is introduced to the youth-oriented cosmetic brand through her mother, aunt or older sister, "But each generation, she feels like she discovered it herself." Tween Brands, which owns the Limited Too and Justice chains, finds its customer "doesn't want to set the trend on the playground," says spokesman Robert Atkinson. In some respects, this makes the tween retailer's job easier. It can follow popular trends from the teen market.

•They want more of everything. Whether it's lip balm or blue jeans, "More is more," says Nita Rollins, who heads marketing intelligence at the digital marketing agency Resource Interactive. "Nothing succeeds like excess." Tweens aren't aware of "social codes of restraint," says Rollins, so they see no reason why they don't need 10 American Girl dolls or several pairs of jeans or sneakers. The average number of Lip Smacker-brand lip balm and glosses owned by Bonne Bell customers is 10, but, Bell notes, "The girls who have 100 make up for the ones who don't have 10."

Therein also lies the success of the low-priced accessories store chains Claire's and Icing. Young people even have a new website, zebo.com, on which to chronicle and quantify their possessions, and millions already have.

•They are environmentally aware. Tweens start to "feel the pain of everybody. They want to know if animals were hurt in making this," says Nisch, whose clients have included H&M and Disney. They might even become vegetarians or vegans. Rollins agrees: "They have social consciousness at a very young age. They have great lives, and so they want to give back."

Bonne Bell doesn't test on animals, and Hilary Bell says the company often gets e-mails from girls thanking it. The company also uses recycled paper, cardboard and plastics in packaging where possible. The girls, for the most part, "have a caring, sharing and compassionate attitude. The Earth, plants and animals are their friends," Bell says.

•They like attention, sort of. "Our customer aspires to be like an older girl, so if she's 10 she wants to dress like a 12-year-old, and a 12-year-old wants to dress like a 14-year-old," says Atkinson. But she's also "more self-conscious" and not usually trying to attract boys, he says. She mostly just wants to appear "more affiliated with her friends."