Marketers cozy up to women’s network

Sue Ellen Cooper thought she would enter her golden years quietly, working on her garden and cooking. Instead, the former graphic designer accidentally launched a rapidly growing social network for older women which has caught the eye of businesses eager to tap the buying power of an age group long neglected by marketers and advertisers.

The Red Hat Society traces its roots to 1998, when Cooper gave a friend a red hat along with a copy of a poem called “Warning,” which begins: “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple / With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. / And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves.”

Cooper found that other friends wanted red hats too, and soon they were going out, having a ball and attracting attention from others who wanted to join.

The groups started to proliferate, and today the Fullerton, Calif.- based Red Hat Society counts more than 800,000 members and 36,000 chapters in the United States. The women, who are mainly over 50, go to the theater, have tea, play cards and generally have a good time.

The 60-year-old Cooper, who has dubbed herself the Exalted Queen Mother of the Red Hat Society, said she still thinks of her flock as a play group for adults. The business ventures started small, as the group found that new members wanted to buy official Red Hat regalia, including pins, boas, and, of course hats, to mark their membership. But soon the Red Hatters found themselves entertaining offers from companies eager to reach older women through the powerful means of a word-of-mouth social network, which happens to be a hot topic among marketers these days.

The makers of Keds, a division of The Stride Rite Corp., recently signed a deal to make a special line of Red Hat-branded Grasshopper shoes. And Jane Thompson, who manages design and sales of fashion accessories for New York-based Accessory Network Group LLC, a major maker of hats and other women’s accessories, struck a deal with the Red Hat Society last fall that she expects will turn into many millions of dollars in sales by 2006.

Sabrina Contreras, business development leader of the Red Hat Society, says the group has turned away a number of proposals that didn’t fit with the group’s message of fun and socializing, including offers from credit card issuers, medical companies as well as the makers of Depends, the adult incontinence products.

“We don’t base (our decisions) on profit,” Contreras said. “It’s important that we’re about fun.”

The Red Hat Society has its own retail store in Fullerton, as well as an online store offering a range of teas, scrapbooks, collectibles, as well as Cooper’s book, “The Red Hat Society: Fun and Friendship after 50.” Twenty-eight companies now make goods under license from the Red Hat Society, but the company, which is privately held, doesn’t disclose financial figures.

Cooper says she never intended the group to become a business, and never expected it to become this large. Now that it has, she says the group is being very careful in signing up new business partners, balancing the need to bring in money with their goal of improving the lives of older women.

“We’re letting this become what it wants to be,” Cooper said. “As long as we continue to fulfill what we consider to be the primary mission, and we take in enough money to make that possible, that’s fine for me. I’m comfortable with what we’re doing.”

Marketing experts say the Red Hatters have made themselves a powerful partner for businesses seeking to reach older women using what some companies have found to be one of the most persuasive means of winning over customers, word of mouth.

Some companies have managed to pull this off for their own products, such as Harley-Davidson Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., whose products inspire fierce loyalty among their users. But the fact that the Red Hatters formed a social network on their own, without any kind of product or activity at the center of it, could mark an important new evolution in the way that businesses reach consumers, marketing experts say.