University of Rhode Island
Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design
TMD 402M Seminar: Fashion for All Ages
Michelle Mead: Children's Market
Jordana Persily
This week our presenter was Michelle Mead who presented to us the children’s market. She graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 1995, not as a TMD major but with a passion for fashion and has been working in the fashion industry for more than ten years now. What she really loves most about this industry is how dynamic and changing it is and how everyday of work is different. She started her career in New York City with an internship at Saks 5th Avenue. Upon graduation she was offered a job to be in the buyer training program at Saks 5th Avenue in the women’s bridge department and jumped on the opportunity. Then she moved to work for Mervyn’s which is owned by Target where she created the line High Sierra. Mervyn’s did everything in house. Michelle started in boys and then moved to juniors, women’s, petites, and maternity (she added the latter two departments on her own). She then went to work for Pottery Barn Kids where she really helped to expand the brand. When she started they had only two stores and a large catalog business. She expanded the brand to 95 stores. Pottery Barn Kids was created when the president of Pottery Barn was pregnant and had nowhere to shop, so she created the brand and it took off. Following her time and success at Pottery Barn Kids she took a year off to travel around the world and is currently consulting.
She continued to move on to speak about the Children’s Market. She began by showing us how much money each industry makes to show us really how important the children’s market is. The women’s market makes more than $100 million, the men’s about $50 million and the children’s market more than $35 million; so it really is an important market to focus on. The children’s market is divided into seven separate sections; infants, toddlers, girls & boys 4-7, girls & boys 8-20, tweens, juniors, and plus size. To illustrate each section of children’s Mead showed us advertisements of both apparel and home. For infants, she showed a recent Gap ad which showed infants wearing clothes very similar to their parents as well a cut crib from Pottery Barn kids, which didn’t even exist 5 years ago. In the toddler market, kids are starting to influence buying decisions and buying decisions are also very emotional. In the 4-7 range, kids are starting to have friends and bigger beds and what they wear is starting to become very important. In the 8-20 range, kids are starting to ditch their juvenile ways and try and act like their older siblings. In tweens, kids want to be just like young adults and wear things like juicy sweat suits as seen in the Neiman Marcus catalog. In juniors, kids are interesting in very high fashion and stores like H&M which changes their line 12 times a year. The final area of focus in the children’s market is plus size. Currently about 15% of children are obese and it is suspected that another 15% will become obese and this not only a huge problem but a huge opportunity for the children’s market.
Mead continued to speak about marketing to children. Children watch about 3½ hours of television a day. They see a lot of advertising and ask for things by brand and title. Parents often want to buy their children everything to try and make up for not being there all day while both parents are working. She finally spoke about what is necessary to create a new product for the market. You have to figure out what is missing in the market and then create it. Some of the products that Michelle created are the hooded animal bath towel which earned $2 million the first year it went to market and was up to $6 million by the time she left the company. She then extended the line to an infant sized towel, which made $4 million the year it was brought to market. She also launched a toddler sized beach towel which made $7 million in two years. She also did research about new homes and found that window sizes were larger. She extended the window treatment line to two new longer sizes and that section of the business grew from a $30 million business to a $90 million business. She also launched new successful products when she was working for Mervyn’s. She helped to launce the Side Out line doing her research by going to and watching the X-Games to learn the customer and then shopping to learn the competition. She added a board short for boys ($50 million year 1), a plaid shirt ($30 million year 1), cargo short ($50 million year 1) and licensed tees ($65 million/year). Ms. Mead has been very successful in her career in the fashion industry which is very admirable.
Lastly she spoke a briefly about what brands are successful and why. Two mentioned are Pottery Barn and Gap. They keep their customer forever. They can start shopping there as an infant (their parents can) and as a child right up through adulthood and become very loyal to the brand which is really what is most important in keeping your customer.
In conclusion, I think that this presentation excellent. Michelle had a wealth of information to offer us about the Children’s Market, something that I had never really thought about exploring before but it really does have a lot of opportunities for success.