Youth furniture sales growing

The online message board for ABC Family’s “Knock First,” a cable show doing room makeovers for teens, has, count them, more than 30,000 plaintive pleas for help from 13- to 16-year-olds all over America that go like this:

“My room is so boring. It has no color. I need a new room before I go mad.”

Or: “Help this room go from ‘penitentiary/insane asylum white’ to ‘hip, bright, party atmosphere.’ PLEASE HELP.”

And: “I’m a teenager now and those Dalmation puppy dogs just need to leave.”

These are the Days of Decor and the instant makeover, when even preteens can no longer tolerate the dull, the outdated, the unaccessorized room. And increasingly, there’s more and more stuff out there to satisfy them as marketers take aim at the so-called “echo” generation — the children and grandchildren of the baby boomers.

“Even at 8 and 11, my girls want the ‘look,’ whatever is cool,” said Maria Katrakazos of Garden City, N.Y., buying new furniture and bedding for her daughters, Sundra and Barbara, at the recently opened BombayKids in Carle Place, N.Y. “They look at catalogs and magazines and TV, the ‘Lizzy McGuire’ show and ‘Raven,’ and say, ‘I want my room to look like that.’ “

The BombayKids store — filled with eye-catching color and daybeds heaped with pillows and gauzy canopy curtains — is just one of a host of new stores or furniture lines aimed at the youth market. There’s Pier 1 Import’s Cargokids and Rooms to Go Kids, hip accessories from Urban Outfitters and parent-friendly furniture from Ethan Allen. Pottery Barn got in early with Pottery Barn Kids, which was launched in 1999. Now its year-old PBteen catalog and Web site featuring items like metal locker drawers and a skateboard shelf is, according to its own reports, doing significantly better than anticipated, with $50 million in sales in its first 10 months.

“You’re seeing more consumers willing to spend more money on youth furniture if the pieces are unique,” says Brit Beemer, whose company surveys consumer buying habits for his furniture-industry clients. Youth furniture, however, remains a small percentage of overall furniture sales, he notes.

Beemer said that if he had to choose between telling a retailer to sell youth furniture or leather sofas, “I’d tell them to get into leather sofas.”

But juvenile furniture analysts say that sales are growing faster than furniture sales in general. And major manufacturers, who, in the past, may have left the kid stuff to industry leaders like Stanley, are getting into the youth market — from posh Louis Phillipe “Mini-me” bedroom suites to loft beds and carts for video game players and televisions. Even double beds are standard offerings for this growing market.

Part of the impetus for all this is that kids, usually self-conscious about their own identity, may simply be more assertive about expressing themselves at an earlier age. Many preteens want to move beyond the cutesy remnants of early childhood.

“Knock First” is produced by the same company that created “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” The search is on for new makeover prospects in the Boston and Los Angeles areas for the second season. To the dismay of its fans, however, the show will be open to 17- to 25-year-olds instead of younger teens, as it was originally. More hands-on participation will be required of contestants.

While companies such as PBteen have done product placements on that and other shows, the designers at “Knock First” say they lean toward more affordable options and a paint-and-carpentry approach that empowers teens. “They’re totally influenced by pop culture and mass media,” says Shane Booth, one of the show’s young designers. “You have to expose them to something they haven’t thought about.” The design has to have a “big wow,” he says. “The room has to be the coolest thing they’ve ever seen.”

But what’s cool can range from retro to contemporary to country, depending on the teen’s preferences.

What many of the makeover after-photos seem to have in common, however, is bold color, cool shelves and built-ins for storage and display. Fun seating where friends can hang out is important. And there are always stylish accessories and bedding.

There’s just as much attention being paid to the younger set, some of it fueled by high-end designers who have become parents or grandparents and aren’t satisfied by the cute and sentimental offerings out there.

California designer Pazit Kagel, of Paza Design, is one example. She showed her contemporary toddler beds, designed after the birth of her own children, at the recent International Contemporary Furniture Fair in Manhattan. The mattress sits on a row of low modular supports with storage drawers inside that can be added to as the child grows and requires a longer mattress.

Magis, the imaginative Italian furniture company showcasing top designers, unveiled a series of creative prototypes at the Milan furniture fair in March. A child’s chair called Pop, made from lightweight, pistachio-colored Styrofoam, demonstrates just how appealing furniture for youngsters can be.

Magis has plans to produce a one-piece chair-and-desk designed by Javier Mariscal — think of a strip of plastic, one end folding up to form the chair, the other to form the desk, then put wheels under the desk and legs under the chair.

Of course, traditional looks still hold their own, especially when the parents do the designing. “People are looking for something practical, not something you’ll outgrow,” says Jerry Epperson, a furniture industry analyst. “You’re not seeing people have things that look like ‘Star Trek.’ “

Jane Kitchen, editor of Kids Today, a juvenile furniture industry trade publication, says that trendier, hip and cool furniture probably will never outsell the more traditional styles that still account for most sales. “I don’t think that is going to replace the more traditional, proven winners. It’s an additional category in a way.”

But, she adds, kids are becoming more interested in their rooms — and at a younger age. “And when they are teens and tweens, they’re interested in things being hip and cool, and, yes, they tend to lean toward the contemporary.” Tweens, by the way, is the word used to describe that increasingly sophisticated span between 8 and 13.

Epperson said that almost all major manufacturers are getting into the youth market, many with pieces to accommodate electronics, from computers to televisions.

And, as always, there are specialty companies that cater to wealthy parents and grandparents, he said, like an Atlanta company called Posh Tots that sells everything from a wooden Coastal Bed for $656 to a vintage race-car bed for $25,000 or a wheeled-carriage bed — price on request. “We’ve got the money to spend,” he said. “We buy whatever the kids want us to buy.”

But interior designer Viola Icken of Northport, N.Y., says she isn’t doing many of the fancy, custom-built fantasy children’s rooms with beds in the shape of sunken ships or playhouses or bulldozers that she was known for in the 1990s. Back then, she might have had 10 such jobs going at once. Some cost as much as $50,000 for a room the parents knew they’d have to change eventually. Now Icken might do one or two children’s bedrooms in a year.

“The parents want to be more practical,” she said. “They want to see a room last longer than the five or six years a theme room lasts. Now, we’ll do some childish things in it, but it can be changed and evolved into a more grown-up room later on.”

Not a bad idea, given the complaints of terminally babyish decor heard from teenagers longing for a new look. Like this one from the “Knock First” message board: “My friends don’t even want to come into my room because of the bunnies.”