Get into the swing—and the slide too. Cartoon Network and several child advocacy groups – including the National Parent Teacher Association, the National Education Association, Hands on Network and the National Association for Sport & Physical Education – are partnering to sponsor National Recess Week, Sept. 18-22. The goal is to help kids, parents and teachers enhance and/or save recess in their schools. The effort is part of Cartoon Network’s “Get Animated” program, which – believe it or not – encourages kids to get away from the TV and go outside to play. Of course, at the end of the week on Sept. 22, if kids are back in front of the tube to watch a special “Operation: R.E.C.E.S.S” episode of “Codename: Kids Next Door,” the probably network won’t mind. Parents and community members can sign up their elementary schools for the program at http://www.rescuingrecess.com/ to receive a free Rescuing Recess kit and information about starting a local volunteer recess monitor program. The kits will contain a variety of activity ideas, games and playground equipment such as red rubber balls, street chalk, whistles and jump ropes, plus instructions and suggestions on how to hold a recess rally.

Talk about a shopping trip. So you say a drive to the local Wal-Mart for pencils and notebooks isn’t enough for you? The Mall of America and NWA WorldVacations (http://www.nwaworldvacations.com/) teamed up this month to launch a back-to-school travel package to the 520 store Bloomington, MN megamall. The offer featured an up to 10% savings – a $150 discount — on round-trip travel to Minneapolis/St. Paul, a two- night stay at a hotel near the mall and more than $1,500 in free tickets and other savings. Once there, moms and dads can take advantage of the zero tax on clothing, while kids can ease the back-to-the-books pain with jaunts to attractions like Underwater Adventures and Aquarium and the NASCAR Silicon Motor Speedway.

Or maybe you want to stay home. If you want the feeling of flight in your shopping without leaving your couch, American Airlines suggests you visit their AAdvantage eShopping mall (http://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/). Until Sept. 17, double miles are available at select retailers while six miles per dollar spent is offered at Target.com, Lands’ End and Overstock.com.

Dressing for success. Wondering what the well-dressed teeny boppers will be wearing this September? Teen Vogue says the five key pieces for a teenager’s fall wardrobe are skinny pants, mini skirts, chunky turtlenecks, jumper dresses and jumbo bags.. “This season there is a focus on different proportions and layering the clothing,” says Gloria Baume, Teen Vogue’s fashion director. “It’s about being more covered up and understated and dressing for function and comfort.” For those of us well past high school, that’s welcome news.

Get dressed for school –and a good cause. This month, Dress For Success Cleaners and supermarket chain Giant Eagle Inc. ran their second back-to-school clothes drive to benefit children in need, “Klothes for Kids.” The campaign took place in 190 Giant Eagle supermarkets throughout western Pennsylvania and Northeast Ohio. Players from the Cleveland Indians and the Pittsburgh Pirates helped kick off the campaign by making donations at in-store events. Last year, more than 14,000 pieces of clothing were collected during the month long drive.

IT’S FINE AND good that the market for selling office supplies to small home offices and businesses is growing by leaps and bounds. But how can direct marketers persuade this amorphous 40-million-person audience that their selling method is quicker and more cost-effective than stopping by a local superstore?

Despite WEFA Group statistics suggesting the $7 billion overall market for business services (including office supplies) in the home will grow 11% a year by 2000, office supply catalogs have tended to stay away from this market, despite the growing number of people across the country working out of their homes.

“There’s not enough volume to make it profitable,” says Irwin Helford, chairman of Viking Office Products, Los Angeles, the cataloger acquired earlier this year by Delray Beach, FL-based office products chain Office Depot, Delray Beach, FL.

But this year, a number of entities are targeting the small office/home office (SOHO) market online with sites offering not only office products but downloadable information intended to help small businesses.

One of these sites, www.officedepot.com, opened in May and racked up over $1 million in revenue during its first seven weeks, says executive director, marketing and merchandising Keith Butler, .at the unit’s San Francisco headquarters.

Overall the site gets 10,000 visits per month and pulls in an average order of just under $500 via site. The site, a new unit of the Florida-based superstore, sells pens, pads, note books, and higher ticket office equipment to this market via the Web.

“We’ve even got soda and coffee,” he adds.

Tools to help the small guys, all residing on the site’s new In Business pages, include a small business handbook, a chat room to talk with other small business executives, magazine articles and downloadable business forms, as well as, of course, the shopping function. Other small business sites have also begun offering similar educational services.

Office Depot also sends out mails several million commercial sales catalogs four times a year. It backs up these efforts with ads in newspapers and magazines, with occasional radio spots thrown in.

Butler notes the Web site represents a minuscule but fast-growing portion of the company’s $7 billion total revenue. The chain is now evaluating transactional data derived from the site and hasn’t yet thoroughly profiled its online customer base.

>From early indications, Butler says the majority of activity on the officedepot.com site is coming from businesses that have four employees or less-a segment he says contains a large number of home offices. Price is apparently not the deciding factor for Web visitors, since Office Depot offers the same price guarantee on all products sold regardless of the channel. Likewise, the $8-billion-a-year superstore chain OfficeMax, headquartered in Cleveland, has been trying to get at the small office market through the Web since 1995. But still, less than 5% of its sales come from the medium, says senior vice president Mike Weisbarth. “It’s a growing segment,” he says.

Another way the two superstore chains are targeting smaller customers is through piggybacking on other companies’ specialized Web sites. Earlier this year, they both became vendors on Quickenbiz.com, a free site designed to assist small businesses jointly developed by financial software developer Intuit Inc. of Mountain View, CA and Excite.

Setting up this site is a key element of Intuit’s long-term strategy of cornering the small business and SOHO markets. The site, also accessible through the Webcrawler search engine, can reportedly deliver a heavy small business audience: a full 30% of quicken.com visitors are small business owners as are 60% of all Web users, says Intuit product manager Scott Pofcher.

Last month, Intuit began letting its mainly small business customer base know about the new site through a direct mail and e-mail effort Later this fall, it may begin targeting outside prospects.

For future growth among the smaller customer segment, OfficeMax has also linked with the Microsoft Plaza Web site, notes Weisbarth. In contrast to the other superstore giants-Office Depot and Massachusetts-based retailing chain Staples Inc.-OfficeMax hasn’t acquired a mail order catalog. Weisbarth isn’t saying if that’s in the cards. “We’re always looking for opportunity,” he says.

A big proponent of the Web is Brian Cassedy, president of the , National Home Office Association, Chevy Chase MD. Over the past few months, the organization moved its operations totally online because of the speed and ease of reaching members and prospects and the monetary savings. Cassedy says it cost NHOA between 50 and 75 cents a piece for a direct mail piece while sending an e-mail costs considerably less.

The NHOA represents several thousand people who are self-employed, full and part-time professionals, and telecommuters who work out of their homes. As with Intuit’s www.quickenbiz.com and Office Depot’s In Business sites, the NHOA offers its members discounts on products and services, as well as time-saving and money-making hints.

Staples, which acquired office supplies cataloger Quill this spring, is also planning to upgrade its online presence, according to a company spokesperson. But not all direct marketers are taking the high-tech road to get to small businesses and SOHOs. In fact, business-to-business cataloger Reliable Corp., seems to be doing well with a traditional direct marketing approach. About 10 years ago, the Schaumburg, IL-based firm launched its consumer-oriented Home Office catalog amid the start of the SOHO phennomenon. So far, the book is pulling in more than $300 million in annual revenue, average orders of more than $100, an expects about 15% growth a year, says president Rick Black.

The monthly catalog markets products ranging from furniture to communications equipment to a market Black says is about 30 homes. The target audience is composed of both of registered businesses and the likes of salespeople, telecommuters and, in some cases, the downsized. The catalog reaches these prospects through such upscale consumer lists like Sharper Image and Hammacher Schlemmer.

“We don’t have any dead-on competition but unlike Reliable’s business-to-business catalog, the [Home Office catalog] competition is highly fragmented,” says Black.

Black asserts the Home Office catalog doesn’t offer consumable office supplies since people can just as easily to local office supplies retailers for those products. This is one reason why he says he’s not too worried about the office Depot/Viking and Staples/Quill mergers earlier this year.