FURNITURE Teens want a room with a slew (of stuff)

Furniture makers are trying to cash in on teens' desire to fix up their rooms.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO -- Walk into Anthony Beno's Flossmoor, Ill., bedroom and the 17-year-old seems to have it all.
There's the DVD player with a 100-disc movie collection, a 20-inch flat screen TV, a Sony PlayStation 2 and a Nintendo GameCube.
But what Beno wants next is an unlikely addition -- furniture.
"I have a desk and a bed in my room right now," the teenager said. "I wouldn't mind a little chair or a couch."
He is not alone. A growing desire among young adults to outfit their rooms has retailers scrambling in a new way to chase down the ever-elusive teen market. Pottery Barn launched PBteen, its own teen furniture catalog in April. And other retailers -- such as Land of Nod, Bombay Kids, Cargokids from Pier 1 and Ethan Allen Kids -- are stretching the age range of their children's furniture lines to appeal to teens.
The tough teen market
It's a tough market to target. Get it right, and the stuff will fly out of the store as it does at clothing retailers PacSun and American Eagle. But get it wrong or fall out of favor, as Charlotte's Russe did with its Charlotte's Room offshoot, and the concept will be forced to close down.
Teens, of course, do not have entire homes to furnish. But these days, children's rooms have become combination family rooms, studies and bedrooms thanks to computers, video games and televisions.
That influx of stuff has helped generate a market for furniture to control clutter and create comfort, said Pat Bowling, director of communications for the American Furniture Manufacturers Association.
"Furniture to house computer equipment, television, a game system and all the accessories that go along with these systems," she explained. "Furniture manufacturers are recognizing that kids have all this stuff."
Home-furnishing retailers initially went after a much younger age group, spanning from infants to pre-adolescents. It was an obvious market to target, since parents, the same people buying at traditional furniture stores, would be the same ones shopping at kids' stores.
It's fickle, too
But the fickle teen market is fueled by a combination of their own money and their parents'. Teenage Research Unlimited found that teens spent an average of $101 a week last year, and the Rand Youth Poll determined that teens influenced $245 billion more in household spending.
Bowling said the attempt to sell teens furniture is a viable concept, given the growing number children that will become teens. Teenage Research Unlimited estimates there are nearly 32 million children between the ages of 12 and 19 and that number will increase to nearly 34 million by 2007.
With teens pulling from two sets of incomes, retailers trying to sell them big-ticket items such as furniture have the dual challenge of making sure the merchandise has both a cool factor to snag teens and a practical appeal to entice the parents.
Getting teens' attention is tricky enough. Trying to pinpoint what's hot and what's not among that age group can be tough since teens tend to jump from trend to trend without warning -- and sometimes without clear reasons.
Even teens cannot explain what makes them flit from one brand to another. Fifteen-year-old Alex McNamara of Fox River Grove, Ill., used to buy all her clothes at American Eagle then suddenly stopped shopping there.
"Everybody goes there," she said.