Tween Eye for Design

By Cathy Booth-Thomas

Karen Robertson is pushing her two kids and a niece out the door of BombayKids in north Dallas as fast as she can. She has narrowly escaped with her wallet intact, and it wasn't easy. Her daughter Kelsey, 10, was enthralled by absolutely everything in the store--the sequined lampshades, the frilly fairy pillows, the rugs, the window coverings and, most of all, the pink canopy bed. "Whew! I really had to get them out of there quick," says Robertson, 34.

But two days later she is back, alone, ordering an ornate daybed for $398. She also picks up a tasseled pink paper lantern for $12. "Why in the world would I need that, right?" she says, laughing. "But it just looked so cute and was so cheap." Plus, she reasons, everything will look great with her daughter's pink-and-yellow flowered comforter from Company Kids and the new desk from PBKids (part of Pottery Barn). "When I was growing up, I had to share with my four sisters and a brother. I was lucky to have a bed!" she says, exaggerating just a tad.

Once upon a time, before 10- and 12-year-olds became an outsize economic force, a kid's room was the spot for a hand-me-down chair, a serviceable desk, a throw rug and the latest pop-idol wall posters. Today it's a color-coordinated, fashion-accessorized statement of personal style. Or more precisely, personal style as interpreted by the growing number of retailers rushing to supply this fast-growing $17 billion-a-year market. Vendors, including Pottery Barn, Pier 1, the Bombay Co., Delia's and Target, are creating new products, catalogs and, in some cases, chains of specialty stores designed to capitalize on the decorating dreams of tweens and teens. "There's a kid quake going on, and spending on furniture is up," says Steve Farley, executive vice president of BombayKids, a year-old offshoot of the Bombay Co. The firm has just six kids' stores now, but it plans to have 100 in three years. At Pier 1, CEO Marvin Girouard foresees the company's new chain of Cargo Kids stores growing from 33 now to 300 over the next decade. "It's a huge underserved market," Girouard says, and he is frankly eager to brand customers while they're young. "If we get them early, they'll continue to buy from Pier 1 forever," he says.

With boomers having babies later and Gen Xers having them sooner, the market could be enormous. There are 44 million tweens and teens, ages 8 to 18, in the U.S. today--a historic peak surpassing even the baby-boomer generation. Teens alone have a whopping $170 billion to spend annually, thanks to allowances, gifts, odd jobs and part-time employment, according to Michael Wood, vice president of Illinois-based Teen Research Unlimited. "Parents are the No. 1 source of their money, but it's the kids who are choosing what to buy," says Wood. What they mainly buy, of course, is clothes, electronics, movies, CDs and games. But in the past few years, as Americans have turned inward and traveled less, kids with cash, abetted by their parents, have turned into decorating divas. WonderGroup, a market-research firm in Ohio, estimates that families spend $386 a year outfitting each child's room with furniture and electronic gear--about double the figure from a decade ago.

TV-programming executives have noticed the trend. After learning that kids were big fans of the reality decorating show Trading Spaces, the Discovery Kids channel decided to launch a pint-size version for 8-to-14-year-olds. Trading Spaces: Boys v. Girls premiered in September. And in October ABC Family launches Knock First, in which teenagers redecorate while their parents are out. "We saw this as a unique take on how teens define themselves," says programming exec Robin Schwartz.

Defining themselves seems to be what the decorating craze is all about for kids, and marketers are happy to oblige with all sorts of easy-to-apply identities. At BombayKids, for instance, product lines are built around concepts like Hippie Chick--fringe, flower power and peace symbols--and Betsy Girl--hot-pink silks, zebra prints and pink beading. "We create a theme, thinking, What's this person like? How do they really live?" explains director of merchandising Kristina Fideli-Ventura. No matter what the concept, "there's lots of color, jewels, gems, glitter," she says. Kid style is "not demure, not understated." Pottery Barn's PBteen catalog also builds furnishings around themes--the fashion-conscious "glam" style, the Asian-influenced Bonsai Boudoir, the surfer-dude Mavericks. Design is playful. Bike handlebar grips serve as chair arms, surfboards as headboards, skateboards as shelves. The fall catalog, 50% fatter than last spring's debut offering, "is substantially exceeding our expectations," says senior vice president Patrick Wynhoff, without divulging any numbers. PBteen stores are a possibility for the future.

Experts say there are two basic musts in teen decor: storage and self-expression. "These kids are pack rats! They keep every last little stuffed animal or treat they got at a carnival or at an arcade, and they want a way to organize it," notes Wynhoff. One of PBteen's most popular offerings is the Locker Collection of desks, dressers, bins and media consoles, all fashioned after high school lockers. Modular and multicolored, the collection offers a way to organize teenage rooms that now boast almost as many electronic gadgets as the family den. To allow self-expression, furniture designers are creating headboards and desktops that double as shadow boxes for showing off pictures, awards or drawings. Teens are "curating their space like it's their own museum," says DeeDee Gordon, co-founder of the trend-spotting firm Look-Look.

Teenage taste is notoriously fickle. To divine trends, designers at PBteen troll the malls and even the extreme-surfing shops. "You just dive into all those places. You watch teenagers," says product-development executive Sandra Stangl. BombayKids designers travel as far as India and China for ideas, but they also watch MTV. It's all very secretive. Ask about next year's colors, and Farley at BombayKids demurs, "We'd have to shoot you if we told you."

Savvy teenagers like Ellen Knapek, 15, a sophomore at Ursuline Academy in Dallas, tend not to buy a ready-made decor from just one vendor. They like to shop around. When her mom remarried in August, Ellen got a new room as part of the deal. "Mom told me I could do whatever I wanted, within reason," says Ellen. Her light-aqua room has a surfboard headboard from PBteen, pastel paper lamps from Pier 1 and a surfer-theme picture frame from Old Navy. Not everything is from a chain store. Ellen found a hula-girl lamp at a Galveston surf shop. Stepdad Terry Letteer approves of the overall look but admits there was a price: "My son got a big-screen TV for moving."

How, exactly, did kids gain such influence and financial clout in their homes? James McNeal, a former Texas A&M professor who is considered the godfather of kids' marketing, notes that between 1950 and 1990, households went from being a patriarchy with Dad in charge, to a matriarchy with Mom in charge, to--you guessed it--a "filiarchy" with kids calling the shots. Or at least co-directing them. Younger parents, especially, are letting their kids control the decorating. "Gen X parents are more collaborative, less me-centered than the boomers. They engage their children in discussions about purchases," says Tim Coffey, co-author of The Great Tween Buying Machine.

Parents who don't want to overindulge their kids' inner Martha would do well to remember that imagination is free and often in ample supply in the young brain. When the trend watchers at Look-Look searched its youth network for cool room ideas, they found 17-year-old Sara from Los Angeles, who decorated every inch of her bedroom walls with graffiti. First it was random quotations and dates she needed to remember, and then she began inviting friends to adorn the walls with excerpts from favorite songs and books. "My bedroom is both a representation of me and has bits and pieces of all my friends," she says. It may not be a parent's idea of decorating, but it's one of a kind--and it didn't cost a dime. --With reporting by Laura A. Locke/San Francisco and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles

With reporting by Laura A. Locke/San Francisco and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles