Up in the club with Seventeen

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb, 2002 by Greg Lindsay

Over the course of its life, Seventeen has offered indispensable advice to its teenage readers about hair, clothes, makeup and boys. Now, the adolescent bible plans to teach them how a velvet rope works.

The classroom for this lesson: One Seven, Seventeen's very own nightclub, which opened in Los Angeles in January. The club, which currently comes to life just on weekends, has a strict ID policy that ensures that everyone paying the $20 cover charge is between 15 and 21. There's room inside for 575 squeaky-clean teens (the most potent drink at the bar is Red Bull), and they can spend the night dancing, listening to Seventeen-sponsored concerts, and even watching fashion shows, thanks to a retractable catwalk.

"It's a great demographic," says owner Steven Foster, "well-dressed, well-behaved, clean-cut kids." And he'd like these mainly suburban kids to spend their money at the in-house Seventeen boutique, which sells items featured in the latest issue.

Foster, who is the founder of the restaurant chain Jillian's, licensed Seventeen's brand a year ago with plans to roll out an entire chain of nightclubs. "Steve would open 12 million [One Seven's] if he could," says Linda Platzner, group publisher of Primedia's teen-themed magazines. But he'll have to settle for one for the time being; the next club, set for 2003, will open in a city yet to be determined.

More clubs will mean more royalties for Primedia (also the owner of Folio:), which is letting Foster pick up most of the operational costs while it provides promotional support and books acts like Jewel and Usher.

Platzner, meanwhile, is already chasing Seventeen's next brand extension. "Watch for broadcast," she says coyly, declining to elaborate.