Attention teen girls: The Teen Vogue Haute Spot opens this month at the Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey. But it's not your typical mall store, because it doesn't actually sell anything.
Instead, the Spot serves up free smoothies and allows visitors to try on clothes from its extensive collection of client brands -- aka, companies that have paid to be featured. Visitors are then encouraged to purchase the clothes at other stores.
As adolescent girls and former adolescent girls, you probably know that young women are a coveted population for advertisers and marketers. And in recent years, teen and tween girls have been increasingly strong economic forces, and more and more companies have made products appealing specifically to them.
But while the Teen Vogue-branded store might have been a good idea last year, we're betting it's not gonna fly this holiday season. First off, ad sales are down so badly that teen mags are closing and Teen Vogue's publisher is supposedly cutting costs by 5 percent via layoffs. And lately, even teens have found themselves affected by the recession.
In April, investment bank and research firm Piper Jaffray released a survey reporting that teen spending on fashion was down 20 percent from a year earlier, with card-swiping by girls declining 11 percent. Sales reports from clothing stores targeting teens, such as Abercrombie & Fitch and the Gap, have seen their numbers plummet in recent months. And Jeff Klinefelter, a senior research analyst at the firm, also said teens are going to fewer restaurants, concerts and movies.
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