I think of Maxigumee (a gifted photographer and contributor to BRO) sometimes as Eddie O’Connell, the narrator of Colin MacInnes’ novel, Absolute Beginners, set in London in 1958–a book that captures the status of the teenager as a new economic class. O’Connell is a freelance photographer with a mess of interesting friends and he takes pictures of the nightlife and anything else depicting new London and its denizens.
Itis hard not to think of ourselves, what we want to buy and who we want to buy it from in our discussion of what type of retail to recruit downtown. But weire forgetting urban teens like Maxigumee, tweens (principally undergrads) and their suburban counterparts.
Teens dominate consumer culture in a way they havenit since the late 50is. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of teens aged 12 to 19 soared to 32 million, an increase of nearly 4.5 million. The demographic’s 17% growth rate far outpaced the growth of the rest of the population, according to Mediamark Research.
For many companies, the junior customer is the fastest-growing market. The set of young girls aged 9 to 17 has been one of the fastest-growing segments in apparel in the past two years.
There is an army of urban and suburban consumers influenced by media culture, trend and fashion savvy, hungry for goods and brands often outside of adultis radar, and financed with wages from part-time jobs or allowances or what marketers call iguilt moneyiocash given by parents who canit afford to spend more of their time.
And those teenagers influence what their parents buy and where they buy it In 2004, over half — 53% — of 9- to 17-year-olds were asked by their parents to go online to find out about products or services, vs. 37% in 2001.
Most of the readers of this blog would not regularly shop H&M if it were downtown. Nor would we regularly shop American Eagle or Abercrombie (though an Abercrombie near Allen, maybe even in the Red Jacket, I think would do very well with teens, 18-22 year old college kids, and the gay community).
But think of kids on UBis Amherst campus finally having a reason to come downtown. Think of shuttles taking kids from Buff State downtown. Think of Canisius college students, a thriving and expanding urban campus, getting on the subway to go downtown. Think of all the style-conscious kids like Maxigumee and his friends from all over the city being able to shop downtownOeand their suburban counterparts being dropped off at the Amherst Campus Station buy their parents and taking the train downtown to do what they can only do now at suburban malls.