Stores targeted at children draw parents, wallets
Atlanta Business Chronicle – by Deborah Held Maslia Contributing writer
Friday, April 11, 2008
With high-end children’s stores such as American Girl and Hanna Andersson at North Point and Perimeter malls, retailers are courting parents along the Georgia 400 corridor.
The Alpharetta market “is on fire,” said Carla Shannon, vice president of leasing for the Southeast region for General Growth Properties Inc., the development company that runs both malls. “That’s why we were able to entice American Girl to come to North Point. It’s a very suburban, very successful shopping center, and the children’s category is very strong.”
American Girl, the company that turned doll collecting into a full-on experience, took a bet on Alpharetta’s demographics and opened its first “Boutique and Bistro” in Georgia at North Point Mall in August.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled with Atlanta’s response to American Girl,” said company spokesperson Stephanie Spanos. Since the August opening, the store has had more than 260,000 visitors, Spanos said.
“We selected Alpharetta and North Point specifically because it’s a premier shopping district and a great fit for the American Girl brand,” she said.
And my, how Alpharetta has grown. Back in the 1990s, when both the area and its mall were new, Alpharetta shoppers did a lot of looking but no real buying, said Deborah Lester, professor of marketing at Kennesaw State University. “The people were there but they were ‘house poor,’ ” she said. Today, however, “the area has caught up and people have money to spend.”
According to Lester, the median annual household income is $94,000 in Alpharetta, compared with $42,000 per household for the state of Georgia.
“Alpharetta not only has double the income level, they have twice as many college graduates,” said Lester. “They also have homes worth twice what the average Georgians live in. You would expect their buying power to be greater in the retail industry.”
So buy they do, especially for their children, which parents are having fewer of and waiting longer to have than in times past, said Lester.
“It’s not the parents that are the targets [of marketers]; it’s the kids that are the targets,” said Mark Weinberg, operating partner of The Shopping Center Group LLC, an Atlanta-based, national retail commercial real estate firm. A combination of two factors is bringing retailers to the 400 corridor, he said: the quantity of children and “the affluence of the parents who live there.”
Of course, there are exceptions. “Even if they don’t have money, parents today have an extremely difficult time telling their kids ‘no,’ ” said Lester. Parents will somehow come up with the funds to buy whatever their child desires, she said.
Sometimes this means asking for assistance.
Enter boomer grandparents, ever happy to buy for their grandchildren and always interested in a day trip to the suburbs for a true mall experience, according to Barbara Babbit Kaufman, author and nationally recognized retail consultant.
“People will come from anywhere” for the best in shopping with their grandkids,” she said. “There are so many baby boomers looking for things to do with their grandchildren. We all love going to these kinds of stores — it’s an outing.”
And really, who but a grandparent or doting auntie would buy a cashmere sweater for a tot, such as those offered at high-end children’s clothier Janie and Jack, also at North Point? This store’s products are “geared towards grandparents,” said Shannon.
Things at Perimeter Mall aren’t too shabby, either. “Hanna Andersson looked at both markets,” said Shannon, before recently opening up in its second Atlanta mall location. The first is at Phipps Plaza.
According to Shannon, “Perimeter has a denser population base” as well as the “office market” — working women who shop on their lunch hours and after work. In fact, 57 percent of Perimeter Mall shoppers reside outside of the trade area, according to market research acquired by General Growth Properties. In addition to these shoppers, there are about 1 million more core shoppers who reside within the mall area.
“North Point is more spread out but is growing,” she said.
“We did look at North Point and it’s worth looking at down the road,” said Johann Olivier, vice president of retail for Hanna Andersson, the Swedish apparel line based on an all-cotton principle and geared at upscale parents who enjoy the idea of “family dressing” (i.e. buying matching pajamas for the whole family).