Retailers targeting baby-boomer kids

Real Estate Weekly, August 31, 1994 by Lois Weiss

Fox says because many parents are now college-educated, things relating to education, such as buying books, are very important. "Many of these activities are so profitable that retailers are finding they can open up independent full-priced stores geared to children's work."

These stores handle not only books, but videos and cassettes and often even games or puzzles. "There is a lot of cross-pollination going on," said Bialek. "If you are shopping for toys, it's natural to pick up the kid's favorite video."

By providing programming in the form of in-store sing-a-longs with children's entertainers and craft workshops with local artists or educators, they have become a place for parents to browse while the children are busy. And most often the children get to choose something to buy and bring home.

"Kids are making purchase decisions in a wide array of products," said Kurnit. "Kids decide cars, they decide vacations, they make restaurant and eating out decisions. On the flip side, we have kids that are fashion-conscious and savvy, and they have more discretionary income themselves."

According to Kurnit, whose company has an in-house corporate consulting firm geared toward children called Kid Think, children between the ages of 6 and 15 have an average allowance of $5 - more money than ever before.

But they also take their guilt-ridden working mothers and lead them into purchasing decisions, everything from what dinner or ice cream to buy, to what car to drive, and where to go on vacation.

It's no wonder that Club Med advertises on Nickelodeon, a TV channel designed just for kids and the young at heart who want to watch reruns of Mr. Ed and The Brady Bunch after bedtime.

There are also clothing stores that are just sports-oriented to satisfy the demand from little sluggers. "If you go into Herman's and Modell's, you see much more shelf space being given to children's merchandise," observed Fox.

He notes there are children's furniture shops such as Belini and The Kids Room, while Portico, a fashionable bed and bath store, has opened a Portico Kids that sells strictly kids furniture at 86th and Madison.

Fox points to the emergence of the family-style restaurants that are going beyond the McDonald's/Burger King fast food concept. Ground Round, Red Robin, Fuddruckers and Pizzeria Uno all are geared towards kids, said Fox, with expanded meals and expanded menus. "The family goes out as a unit, they shop together, they eat together and it's all a part of the experience," he noted.

Children's entertainment is spawning its own niche, from pure theater to video arcades with virtual reality games and batting cages.

Competitors of enterprises like Westchester's Sportime USA are able to bank on the large spaces of the suburbs, family crowds, birthday parties and corporate lunch hours to keep its batting cages, hoop shooters, pool tables and state-of-the art video and virtual reality games munching tokens. Fox says opening a Manhattan Sportime USA would be almost an impossibility because of the size and the demographics, while the outer boroughs offer more opportunities.