The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 238

C16oc SUNDAY, MAY 30, 1999 LOS ANGELES TIMES TEENS: Young People Spending More Than Time in Malls Big Designers Venture Into Teen Market were tested when teens were featured during a daylong marketing conference in New York attended by DuPont's business customers. Marketers are divided over whether teen research is an accurate predictor of future trends. "We don't create a fashion or invent it," Harmon said. "We only recognize it hopefully, early on. And teen panels aren't always a good predictor of future trends and fads." But marketers can't afford to turn a deaf ear to teens.

Pacific Sunwear experimented a year ago with selling harder-edged fashions appealing to a subset of teens. The chain figured it could boost sales by adding the urban-oriented apparel. But kids who favored the alternative look said they wanted their own stores. The Anaheim Hills-based company responded with a 15-store chain called D.E.M.O. "Now, each set of kids has their own store," Harmon said.

"We listened and learned." Adults get an earful when teens are asked what's hot and what's not. There was no shortage of opinions expressed when Teen People invited Foothill Ranch-based Wet Seal Inc. to meet Amber and the five other girls from Southern California. The girls quickly turned thumbs down to a quirky fanny pack with several separate pockets that the junior women's apparel chain will sell this summer. (Time will tell.

Wet Seal is betting that the fanny pack will be a big seller.) Wet Seal hasn't rushed into online retailing, figuring that the market isn't yet mature. That's fine with Teen People's panelists, who spend hours online but don't see the Internet as a shopping vehicle. "What are you going to do to make it worth my while?" asked 19-year-old Carrie Kravetz, a USC freshman and the oldest panelist. "Besides, the mall is a very social no sense of inhibitions," said Pacific Sunwear President Timothy M. Harmon, who regularly attends focus groups.

"When the facilitator takes a break, they'll fix their hair, put on makeup, crack jokes. I was even mooned by a guy on one occasion." Marketers cast a wide net to find cool teens who aren't afraid to speak their minds. Teenage Research Unlimited, a Northbrook, market research company, assembled 500 candidates for Bates USA to choose from. The ad agency used questionnaires and telephone calls to select a geographically diverse panel with urban and suburban teens from traditional households and one-parent families. Marketers leave no stone unturned in their search for coolness.

To help foster openness, Teen People panelists are asked to bring along items with special meaning. Amber's explanation for the body piercing and a camera: "I like to remember good memories when I'm facing a bad situation." Bates USA handed out disposable cameras that teens used to create collages. Some concentrated on friends and family; others shot pictures of their homes and surroundings. Most collages described active lifestyles that contradict the image of slacker teens. DuPont brought 15 teen consultants on a daylong shopping spree at Los Angeles' Beverly Center.

Among the market intelligence gathered by DuPont Teen Initiative Manager Sheryl Parente was the fact that teens didn't like the fit of one company's line of cottontwill pants made with Lycra. Parente quickly passed word of the problem along to the manufacturer. DuPont also hired coaches to help teens from schools such as Santa Monica High School, Pasadena City College and Taft High School in Reseda to better express their opinions. The speaking skills earn $360 a year and a $100 bonus for completing six assignments dealing with such topics as what's important in their lives and where they expect to be in 15 years. When it decided to market its Lycra fabric directly to teens as opposed to their mothers DuPont Co.

hired 30 "teen consultants" who earn a modest fee to help the Delaware-based chemical and fiber company plug into teen fashion trends. Other companies, including Levi Strauss, Reebok and Channel One also use teen panels to unlock teen minds, hearts and pocketbooks. "So many things going on in their lives are a mystery to adult advertisers," said Janice M. Figueroa, senior vice president of Bates USA. Insights sometimes are at odds with traditional research.

"When you ask kids what's most important about their lives, they answer, 'How good I feel about Figueroa said, "They don't say peer pressure and the need to fit in. That's an incredible difference, certainly a change from what the psychology books say, and what most adults remember." Bates USA used data generated by its panel to help steer a client away from an "in-your-face, antisocial, rebellious" ad campaign, Figueroa said. "Teens recognize that being a teen means pushing the envelope, but they're put off by adults who don't respect them for what they really are." The online experience also is reshaping how teens view themselves, researchers say. Pimples, dirty hair and a pudgy body aren't as important online as in the real world. "No matter what they look like, or how geeky they think they are, there are affinity groups to accept you online," Figueroa said.

"The Internet is really making kids quite different than generations in the past." Teens can be brutally frank when asked for their opinions. "There's Continued from CI direction. When she visits foreign countries, she adds a new piercingincluding a belly-button piece from Mexico. Days after this meeting, the orange tint in her hair will give way to six blue streaks. "I do things that I like, usually way before or way after everyone else." said the well-spoken college- bound student who hopes to become a doctor.

"The fashion industry has got to be one of the toughest industries out there because of people like me." It's only going to get tougher for companies that lose sight of influential teens such as Amber. Teens are reshaping retail markets in a manner not seen since their baby boomer parents poured into shopping malls. The teen population hit 27 million in 1998 and will continue to outpace overall population growth through 2010. Teen spending mushroomed to $141 billion in 1998, up 41 from $100 billion in 1994. Fortunes are being won and lost in the teen fashion derby as youthful consumers force such traditional favorites as Levi Strauss Co.

to close factories while such competitors as Abercrombie Fitch Co. are turned into red-hot brands with stock prices to match. Marketers are ratcheting up research into what makes teens tick. Some pay teens to report on what's hot. Others host invitation-only gatherings so adults can listen in as teens dissect commercials, movies and music.

Teen People, published by Time Warner uses telephone calls, online surveys and pizza parities, including the recent three-hour session with Amber in Los Angeles, to monitor 5,000 "trend spotters" among their readers who critique advertisements, relate their vision of cool and, occasionally, write articles for the magazine. Bates USA assembled a coed team of 36 "teen reporters" who THEME: Amusement Parks Out to Attract a Family Crowd place. It's a fun thing. And I don't know how much fun you'd have shopping on the Internet" Retail chain executives such as Wet Seal President Ed Thomas might yearn for simpler times when New York and Los Angeles set teen trends in motion. Now, Thomas says, "there are five or six trends ongoing, and each is borrowing from the other." The fashion influx is fueled in part, observers say, by confidence instilled in teens who are growing up during an unrivaled economic boom.

The shopping haunts favored by members of Teen People's panel reflect that diversity. Kravetz includes thrift stores on her shopping list, while a 14-year-old Santa Monica student at the Teen People session favored Mossimo, Polo and Calvin Klein. Advertising good or bad doesn't go unnoticed. The teens unanimously trashed a Calvin Klein advertisement featuring a young girl with what the teens described as a "druggy" look. They frowned at a Davidoff toilet water ad showing a nude woman but giggled when one girl called for more naked boys in advertisements.

They ripped a TJ Maxx ad describing their time of life as "the awkward years." They expressed dismay that so many advertisements show perfect models. Yet all agreed it would be nice to look like models in carefully orchestrated ads. Researchers say critiques offered by brand-conscious teens are a reminder that adults don't always know the answers. "Sometimes adults are prejudiced by their own love of a product or a creative concept," said Irma Zandl, a New York-based consultant. "They don't see how the whole things falls down but the kids tell them it's not very compelling, it doesn't make them want to buy." with a CityWalk entertainment mall beside it; the first of three high-end hotels being built with investment partners Rank Organization and Loews Hotels will open later this year.

Total cost for the new Universal complex: about $2.5 billion. By contrast, Universal Studios Hollywood this summer has stuck to its "ride the movies" theme with the $65-million Terminator 2 3-D, based on the apocalyptic action film "Terminator!" Sea World in San Diego also is broadening its offerings with a $10-million South Seas-themed raft ride, Shipwreck Rapids, designed to change its image to that of an adventure park. Owner Anheuser- Busch Cos. is adding similar rides at several other SeaWorld parks, and has added the "adventure park" tag to the names of all its parks. At Knott's, Cedar Fair has been adding thrill rides to goose up the park's old-fashioned mix of family-oriented shows, coasters and carnival-style arcades.

GhostRider, a $24-million wooden roller coaster, is new this summer (it actually opened last December). And Cedar Fair bought and is cleaning up the dowdy old Buena Park Hotel, which will become a Radisson, and is planning to add a separate water-slide park in 2000. The Bugs Bunny World revamp at Six Flags Magic Mountain is among six such family-oriented additions at parks operated by owner Premier. By contrast, Premier is adding big thrill rides at just three Six Flags parks, despite their reputation as catering to coaster enthusiasts. But Premier officials say they will continue to add big rides as in the past, which has meant a major roller coaster every other year at Six Flags Magic Mountain.

The park got its last one, Riddler's Revenge, in 1998, and is due for another next year. Premier also has reduced admission prices for anyone under 4 feet tall the cutoff for many thrill rides to $9.99 at Magic Mountain to reinforce its family pitch. And it is redesigning kiddie rides so parents can sit on them too. New rides include a toned-down roller coaster, Canyon Blaster, and the free-fall ride Sylvester's Pounce and Bounce. Youngsters are important "in terms of the numbers we want to attract," Premier President Gary Story said.

"Although they may not spend at the level of adults and teenagers, they certainly buy cotton candy and T-shirts and all the other things we sell." Children also are important customers for a longer-term reason. "Appeal to the little kids with characters, and you've got a customer for life," Story said. By ABIGAIL GOLDMAN TIMES STAFF WRITER The bigger names in fashion aren't about to let a huge group of people with a huge amount of disposable income skateboard away too quickly. That's why important players such as Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. and Tommy Hilfiger Corp.

"arid Donna Karan are jumping into the juniors game, hoping to grab market share with their powerful brands and marketing ability. The designer names "almost guarantee that it will be a smash hit in the beginning," said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard's Retail Trend Report. "Whether it continues to be a smash hit remains to be seen." Whatever success they have probably will be enjoyed by more than just the designers and their licensees. Department stores, which have suffered at the hands of the specialty stores, are hungry to get their hands on the powerful teen dollars as well. If the big names are able to call out to those teens, the stores that carry the hot' new lines will benefit along with their makers.

Ralph Lauren's new young line, called Ralph, will be aimed at 16- to 24-year-olds when it debuts this fall, with the same classic look that been successful in the company's adult lines, 'r. "We are eager to capture this market," said a Ralph Lauren spokesperson. "It's the fastest-growing segment of society, they're more sophisticated than they've ever been, and it's going to be one of the most prosperous generations as well." Tommy Hilfiger's Tommy line, for young people 13 to 24, will arrive in stores in spring 2000, joining his already powerful lines for children and adults, which are routinely sported by hip-hop artists and other celebrities and already copped by the younger set. Donna Karan's younger line, licensed by Liz Claiborne also is scheduled for next spring. Although Liz Claiborne does not produce a juniors line under its own name, a license to produce the DKNY juniors line and the recent acquisition of Lucky Brand Dunga- 'We are eager to capture this market.

It's the fastest-growing segment of society, they're more sophisticated than they've ever been, and It's going to be one of the most prosperous generations as RALPH LAUREN SPOKESPERSON rees Inc. and its juniors line Hot Pink gives the company a toehold in the younger market. "It is a large and important segment of the market, and one in which we think we could make a significant impact," said Liz Claiborne President Denise V. Seegal. "The DKNY approach to design and styling, which is consistent with the attitude of the junior consumer, coupled with its brand recognition and cachet, make it an appropriate fit." But time-tested designers who have toiled in juniors for years caution the top-drawer designers not to be overly optimistic.

Lauren and the like are accustomed to dictating fashion to adults who will listen to them and follow their lead, but teenagers don't like to be told what to wear. "Companies that do well in the juniors world adapt very quickly and have a really good pulse on the customer," said Larry Hansel, founder and chief executive of Rampage Clothing which has had its share of ups and downs and recently emerged from bankruptcy. "It doesn't matter what the brand is if the product isn't right. Those guys have their work cut out for Barnard and others suggest that both companies are well aware of the fickle nature of the young consumer. And, adds Ralph Lauren, they are used to tough competition.

"Juniors isn't any more volatile than the jeans market," the spokes-' person said. "We've had huge success with Polo jeans, and we only launched it two years ago." What's more, each of the companies sells clothes with a classic look that has been successful for stores such as Abercrombie Fitch Co. and Gap Inc. "They are now beginning to look at this whole junior business as a new market and say, 'Why should we let it go to the Barnard said. "It's a smart move on the part of those companies; the probability is strong that they will be successful." IK -rr, 1 DAVID BOHRER Los Angeles Times Shelby Tahtlinger, left, and Kohl Michaels were among the first to ride Canyon Blaster on its first day of operation Thursday at Magic Mountain.

Continued from CI $11.6 million 12th-highest among the states. "Over the last decade, the competition has increased ferociously, and not just from other states," said Caroline Beteta, executive director of the California Travel and Tourism Commission. "It's cities, regions and international destinations, too Australia, Hong Kong, Europe, the U.K. Everyone has seen the lucrative value of bringing in visitors." In Florida, visits from Brazil and other countries with economic troubles fell sharply last year, and Walt Disney new Animal Kingdom park gobbled more attendance than expected from other parks. Travel officials there point to aggressive marketing by other vacation destinations, noting that casino and industry groups plunk down $256 million a year pitching Las Vegas, tnore than twice what the Orlando area spends.

With competitors as varied as adventure travel, cruise ships and casinos turning up the heat, the theme park emphasis on the family market represents a relatively cheap bet on expanding market share, analysts say. At about $120 million, Universal Studios' "Jurassic Park" thrill ride cost nearly as much as the entire new Legoland park opened by toy maker Lego in Carlsbad this spring. II "The engine that drives the train is roller coaster, but you just can't go year after year putting a bi coaster in," said Richard Kin-zek chief executive of Cedar Fair, wljose five parks include Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park and Ce'dar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. attractions at youngsters also helps parks market to the real leisure decision-makers of the' family: mothers. Point, for example, has long billed its Magnum XL-200 as "the best roller coaster on the planet." But ads touting Magnum's 10th anniversary close by showing "Peanuts" characters strolling the midway with a family.

(The park's latest addition is Camp Snoopy, a family play area first created at Knott's Berry Farm.) "You plant that seed we the big rides, but also Snoopy and the other characters," Kinzel said. At Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, known for rides with 100-mph blastoffs and 6V4-second fre falls, this year's top addition is an expanded Bugs Bunny World area with 15 attractions, including a giant playhouse and a pint-sized roller coaster. It's part of a major push by owner Premier Parks Inc. of Oklahoma City to exploit the licensed Warner Bros, characters tq attract more families. And at Legoland, where the Danish toy "Company spent $130 million to lure the 2-to-12-year-old set, one big "thrill ride" is the Kid Power where riders pull them selves up a track 35 feet before releasing the rope and drifting gently back to Earth.

The marketing professionals boil down the power of these family pitches to a single emotion: guilt. The feeling, common in households in which both parents work full time, prompted one out of four business travelers to take children on a business trip last year, according to Peter Yesawich of Yesawich, Pepperdine Brown, an Orlando, leisure consulting and marketing firm. Guilt also makes children a major influence in picking destinations for 60 of family vacations, according to the National Leisure Travel Monitor, an annual survey by Yesa-wich's group and Yankelovich Partners. "A vacation for a contemporary family is almost a mini family reunion," Yesawich said. "When you and your spouse finally lock in the time for the three or five or seven days you can get off, there's a higher probability you'll bring the kids along, because you think you don't spend enough time with them." Yesawich detects a growing interest in "multi-generational travel" not just parents and kids, but also the grandparents.

"Vacation is a terrific surrogate," he said, for those who can't carve out family time at home. Salomon Smith Barney leisure analyst Jill S. Krutick applauds industry efforts to broaden its offerings. "They are trying to create a family experience," she said. Premier, a stock she recommends, has an edge because "they have the benefit of the Warner Bros, characters to really draw the crowds." The phenomenal success of Walt Disney World operating profit is in the $l-billion range annually results from pushing the something-for-everyone strategy to its limit, Krutick said.

Besides parks, the Florida complex includes the elder hostel-style Disney Institute, 99 holes of golf, the Pleasure Island nightclub zone, the Disney Cruise Line, and amateur sports and race-car facilities. As for the industry as a whole, "everyone is in a market-share grab," said Seidler Cos. analyst Jeffrey Logsdon. He notes that it's not a good idea to underestimate Disney, but he is more skeptical of other efforts to broaden franchises, saying that parks such as Six Flags and Knott's probably will continue to rise and fall on the strength of the major new rides they add. Extra attractions, longer stays, and a big run-up in ticket prices have pushed the cost of theme park vacations ever higher over the years.

But so far the extensive surveys conducted by Disney and Universal indicate that customers aren't fazed, said Norm Merritt, a former top marketer for both com- Green told a recent meeting of young executives in Anaheim. "We're a travel and tourism company." Reflecting that focus, the bulk of the work underway at the Disneyland complex is outside the park, including a renovation of the Disneyland Hotel. At Disneyland itself, the only major change this summer is the remodeling of the Swiss Family Treehouse into a Tarzan theme. The walk-through attraction originally re-created the setting of a 1960 Disney live-action movie about a shipwrecked family; the new look ties in to this summer's animated feature from the studio. But in Florida, where the competition includes a huge new family-oriented park from Universal Studios, Disney is opening multiple new attractions this year at its four parks and Downtown Disney entertainment center.

The Magic Kingdom, modeled on Disneyland, is adding rides based on Buzz Lightyear and Winnie the Pooh, along with the Main Street Electrical Parade, an import from Anaheim. The world's fair-style Epcot has added the thrill ride Test Track. Disney-MGM Studios has Fantasmic, a live-action and light show from Disneyland, and the looping Rock 'n' Roller Coaster. Animal Kingdom has opened a new land, Asia, including a white-water rafting attraction. And Downtown Disney now includes a permanent venue for the circus acrobatics of Cirque du Soleil.

A few miles from Disney World, Universal's high-gloss Islands of Adventure park next to Universal Studios Florida includes Dr. Seuss-and dinosaur-themed areas as well as cutting-edge thrill rides a package aimed straight at Disney's family constituency. Islands officially opened Friday Just Visiting Strong national and state economies have contributed to higher spending by travelers in California. But competition for the tourist dollar is strong. California's share of U.S.

leisure travel, in trips taken: 12 1998: 9.9 of leisure trips '91 '92 '93 '94 '95 '96 '97 '98 Estimate Source: p.K. Shifflet Los Angeles Times panies. "By and large, people still see it as a pretty good value compared to the competition say, going skiing or taking a cruise," Merritt said. That could change, though, if the economy heads south. Merritt figures a sharp economic downturn could slice theme park attendance by up to 10.

Facing a wealth of competition, Disneyland plans to build on its lead as California's most visited theme park with a Anaheim expansion that opens in 2001. It includes a second theme park, a luxury hotel and an entertainment center, Downtown Disney, all designed to defend its family franchise while reaching out to more sophisticated and affluent guests. "We're not just a theme park company anymore," Disney theme parks and resorts chief Judson 10 Break In scale Mill.