When asked what business American Girl is in, Ellen Brothers doesn’t answer direct marketing or retail or catalogs. She says her company is in “the girl business.”
Brothers, president of American Girl and executive vice president of its parent company Mattel Inc., told attendees at the New England Mail Order Association’s spring conference recently that not limiting itself to a particular marketing channel or approach has been key to the company’s growth.
For a kitchen table start-up founded in 1986, the company grew fast. In its first decade alone, American Girl went from five employees to 1,000, and from 10,000 square feet of warehouse space to over 1 million.
Marketers with young daughters are likely very familiar with the Middleton, WI cataloger, which sells books and dolls based on a line of historical and contemporary characters created by the company.
The books always come before the dolls, said Brothers, noting that each of the eight characters in the American Girls Collection historical line have a series of paperback books. “You can’t buy one of our dolls without a book,” she noted, adding that the company has sold over 100 million books.
Aside from the books, the array of outfits and accessories offered (everything from hats and coats to commodes and valises) is dazzling. I’m sure many mothers look at the catalog and wish they had something like this when they were younger. Me, I’m not sure I would have gotten it. I always favored stuffed animals, superheroes and Barbies over traditional baby or little-girl dolls. After all, Barbie had a boat and a camper and a dream house. Wonder Woman had an invisible jet. What did you get with baby dolls, single motherhood?
On the contemporary side, the company also produces American Girl magazine, which has 650,000 subscribers and receives 10,000 pieces of mail per issue. The brand is being grown further by a biweekly syndicated newspaper column that reprints magazine content.
The American Girl Today line of more modern dolls features 21 different dolls of different skin tones and hair types, and has a complimentary “dress like your doll” clothing line for little girls.
For the first 10 years, the catalog was the company’s sole marketing vehicle. It purchases no space or television, instead leaning toward alternative forms of promotion, such as bind-in cards in its books and a robust Web site that now generates 30% of all first-time orders. The catalog had 1.5 million customers over the last 12 months but doesn’t rent its file, only doing occasional exchanges.
But the strongest PR the brand gets is from girls themselves. Brothers showed a video of a little girl opening an American Girl doll for her birthday. The level of excitement shown by this young lady is only rivaled by contestants on “The Price Is Right” who have won a new car and received a big kiss from Bob Barker.
She also showed a clip from Oprah, where the talk show host visited the company’s Chicago retail store. Girls — and their moms — were having tea parties with their dolls, attending live stage shows and, most importantly, spending hours shopping.
The company opened a second retail outlet last November in Manhattan. The shops are designed as destinations with theaters, cafés and doll hair salons in addition to shopping. The average customer visit is over two hours, said Brothers. A possible third store, likely on the West Coast, is under consideration.
The brand will be extended yet again this year by American Girl’s first television movie. It’ll be produced by Julia Roberts’ production company and shown on The WB. An online sweepstakes offering a behind-the-scenes set visit already has generated more than 65,000 entries.
Brothers conceded it is a bit ironic that the company was acquired by Mattel, since American Girl was originally created to be the antithesis of Barbie. But the marketing match has been successful so far, she said.
American Girl has served as a direct division of Mattel, which has been branching out into other direct response ventures targeting niches such as Barbie and Matchbox collectors. Even so, Brothers noted, the doll maker has to be careful not to upset titans like Wal-Mart, which are gaining a monopoly on the retail toy space.
The company isn’t likely to move beyond its target demographic of girls between ages 6 and 12, she said, noting that once you get into the tween and teenage categories one has to address such “scary things like boys and puberty.” The preschool market is deftly handled by Mattel’s Fisher-Price brand, said Brothers. And while going after the “American Boy” market was considered before the Mattel acquisition, it hasn’t been pursued since.
Ah, well. My toddler son will have to be content with Batman and Spider-Man. You know — things his mommy can relate to.
BETH NEGUS VIVEIROS ([email protected]) is executive editor of Direct.
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