Sat, Oct 04, 2003 page10

• Tweenagers rule Japan's `10 wallets'

  • REUTERS
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  Catching bullet trains into Tokyo from all over the country and even flying in from overseas, streams of Japanese "tweenage" girls are coming to shop until their parents drop.

  Forget about the slow economy, high unemployment and falling wages, the new market for hip clothing for children, especially girls aged 9 to 14 -- the so-called tweenage years -- is a welcome bright spot for retailers beset by two years of falling sales.

  "We have some people spending ?1 million to ?2 million (US$9,000 to US$18,000) in one visit on our outfits," said Yuzo Narumiya, 66, president of one of Japan's biggest children's clothing chains, Narumiya International.

  Behind the boom is Japan's falling birthrate, which together with social and economic uncertainty, has focused parents' and relatives' attention on their offspring, analysts say.

  "Crime is rising, pensions and jobs are no longer secure. Parents and children alike, unable to dream of the future, tend to splurge on instant pleasure," said Utata Iwata, a marketing analyst at research company Yano Intelligence.

  With doting parents to look after their needs, tweens no longer have to rely on the hand-me downs prevalent among their counterparts in the previous generation that helped keep a lid on the market for children's clothes.

  "Mothers now take pride in having coolly dressed daughters, their little princesses," said Narumiya, whose company started as a traditional Japanese Kimono robe maker and moved to kids' clothes in 1985.

  "Before, the tweens' clothing market had been a big vacuum that no company cared to enter," Narumiya said.

  Most tweens today also have access to "10 wallets," says Makoto Takahashi, president of market research company Soken Research Institute.

  That means there's money available from grandparents, who have large disposable incomes, as well as ummarried aunts and uncles willing to splash out on young relatives.

  Most Japanese families are curtailing overall household spending as the outlook for wages and employment sours, Takahashi says, and are giving up on eating out, are carrying lunch boxes to work and are spending less on big-ticket items.

  "But children's wear and education are the last things parents want to slash spending on," Takahashi said.

  At Narumiya, they know all about that.

  The retailer's bubble-gum colored Angel Blue and Daisy Lovers brand outfits, embossed with chubby, smiling animal-like chara-cters, carry hefty price tags -- a pink top costs ?14,800, a yellow cotton T-shirt ?6,900 and a blue skirt ?10,800.

  "They are more expensive than my own clothes," says Takako Mishima, a 39-year-old mother, one of hundreds of shoppers at Narumiya's Junior City store in Tokyo's bustling youth fashion mecca of Shibuya.

  "But for our other clothes, we usually go to cheaper Uniqlo shops to make ends meet," said Mishima, who came with her three daughters from the expat family's home in Taiwan.

  Hiroshi Wada, 42, came with his daughter from Hakata, 900km west of Tokyo, and spent about ?50,000 on the Narumiya brands, some of the most coveted among tweens and which now include candies, nail varnish, accessories and even brand-themed comic books.

  "I love the characters and the colors. They really cheer me up," said daughter Arisa, 10.

  There are no specific statistics on spending on children's clothing, but Sanyo Shokai Ltd, which sells luxury British label Burberry goods, said its children's wear sales jumped 69 percent last year, while its overall sales growth was limited to 5.3 percent.

  Narumiya has seen sales grow an average 30 percent a year in the past three years, and its character toys are on offer with the purchase of set menus at McDonald's Holdings Co Ltd (Japan) hamburger shops.

  The prospects look good even though Japan's birthrate is already the lowest among the world's advanced economies, having hit an all-time low last year.

  The population of children aged 14 and younger is expected to shrink to 17 million in 2010 from 27 million in the early 1980s.

  Fewer kids will mean even more spare cash for spending, and while boys are also the recipients of largesse, it will be mostly young girls' fashions and sundries, as well as education, that will likely show the biggest growth.

  But, ironically, the boom might in the end be self-defeating.

  The high cost of raising children has further depressed Japan's birthrate, and many couples are saying that paying for No. 1 means they can't afford to have No. 2.
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