The Journal. - The Rise of the Tween Shopper

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

Tweens, or kids aged 8 to 12, have learned to shop online. Brands are taking note. WSJ’s Chavie Lieber spoke to TikTok-er Demetra Dias and explains the impact of influencers like her on young shoppers and the brands that court them. Further Reading: - Teen Girls Are Spending Big. She Tells Them What to Buy.  - Why Tweens Are Obsessed With This $110 Sweatsuit  Further Listening: - How the Stanley Cup Became the Internet's Favorite Water Bottle  - Teens Are Falling Victim to AI Fake Nudes  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every day, 17-year-old Demitra Diaz looks at her closet and decides what to wear. And when she does, she hits record on her phone and makes a video. I decided I want to wear this jean skort today. Are these red ones? I was thinking we could do like a white tank to match the white. Demitra started making these kinds of videos about a year ago. Since then, she's done some typical high school things,

gone to prom and finished 11th grade. But she's also had some not so typical experiences, like collaborating with clothing brands and pulling in 3 million followers on TikTok. Our colleague, Javi Lieber, reports on internet culture and has been following Demetra. She loves shopping, she loves clothing, she has great style.

This is all stuff I already have and I'd recommend for you for back to school. First, let's start with jeans. She makes dancing videos, she's fun, she's sweet. Today's officially my last day of summer. Tomorrow I have school. Some of Demetra's top videos, they have, she has 29 million views

and it's just her shopping for low rise jeans. So I thought, there's definitely something here. I think this is a combination of TikTok boosting her videos, but also just the power of Gen Alpha engagement on TikTok. Gen Alpha, that's the generation of kids born after Gen Z. Demetra's average TikTok follower falls in that demographic, mostly kids who are about eight to 12 years old, also known as tweens. And Javi found that these tweens are spending a lot of money

buying things that teenagers like Demitra are posting about. Her influence is pretty astounding. You know, I talked to this one brand, and the CEO had told me that anything that Demitra posts, like, they just totally sell out. She just has comments and comments and comments and comments. Where's that hoodie from? Like 400 times.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Wednesday, September 4. It's Wednesday, September 4th. Coming up on the show, the power of tween spending. Your teen requested a ride, but this time, not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your team to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers.

Add your team to your Uber account today. After girding our collective loins for a far-right resurgence across the world, there's even more to unpack in global politics and its implications for our own, not-so-little far-right problem as the U.S. prepares for an election in November. I'm Tommy Vitor, and each week on Pod Save the World, my co-host Ben Rhodes and I break down the biggest international headlines and latest foreign policy developments in a way that doesn't feel like homework. You'll hear interviews with former White House colleagues, insights from our time in the

Situation Room, and more along the way. Catch new episodes of Pod Save the World every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts, and on YouTube. In June, Javi drove to Demetra's home in Northern New Jersey to see her in action. At the time, Demetra had about 2.5 million followers. So show me. So, yeah. Okay.

Oh, what's all this? These are packages. I ended up, you know, spending time with Demetra. I went to her house. Is this where you record? Yes. We made some TikToks together. I sound like I'm not here.

Okay, so I pick out, like, my outfits for the video. OK. We went through her closet. This was, like, my spare room, and I kept, like, all my boxes. But now... Oh, stop! Now it's my closet. Demetra, this is crazy.

Every week, roughly half a dozen boxes arrive at Demetra's doorstep. They're filled with things that companies want Demetra to show off in her videos. Things like sweatshirts and tank tops and jeans. It's the kind of stuff teens and tweens would wear, and the kind of thing Demetra was wearing when her videos started going viral. Like, what were you wearing then? I was wearing these jeans. Are they low-rise? Yeah, they're low-rise, baggy.

Of course. That's what started it. It was like my outfit. It just went from like a thousand to like ten thousand. It just kept growing. It was more of like a realization because I could never imagine 2.5 million people in a room. And a secret to Demetra's success is that she's relatable. She seems like a fun, nice, cool big sister.

If you look at the comments, it's so much like, you know, you radiate positive energy or you seem so sweet. And I think it's important to note that for kids on TikTok, this is so much more relatable than a Kardashian or a celebrity. Whereas Demetra is, she's gonna be a senior in high school, she lives in New Jersey, she studies for chemistry homework. Like, I think for the kids that follow her, you're more likely to wanna buy what she is promoting.

A lot of Demetra's posts lead to a bump in sales for brands that she's wearing. Her influence on tween shopping has even led to the circulation of a TikTok hashtag called the Demetra Effect. Her followers use it when they buy something she posted about. One of Demetra's followers told Javi that she changed her style and started buying low-rise jeans instead of high-rise jeans because of Demitra. I talked to this one brand, Amare, which is a new teen-focused brand.

The CEO, she did a Valentine's Day collaboration with Demitra, and it sold out in an hour and made $90,000 in sales. Wow. It's interesting because when you think about tweens, $1,000 in sales. It's interesting because when you think about tweens, between the ages of eight and 12, like I feel like I don't really think about them going around dropping dollars, like spending a bunch of money, they're kids.

Well, you need to remember, like this is generation internet. And so if you think about how technologically savvy they are by the time they hit eight, nine, ten years old, a lot of them already have smartphones and a lot of them are already on social media. That's where they see fashion trends and stuff and so they are they are very big shoppers and like the demographic that I'm talking about most likely have their own smartphones or some sort of iPad and have access to the internet and are either using their own babysitting money or allowance money to go shopping or they're using their parents credit cards. Right. So they have

they have the means and have the access basically. Exactly. Okay. And so what are tweens buying these days? So denim and status sneakers, accessories and purses and for boys it's you know skater denim also sneakers. Skincare you know teens are obsessed with skincare. They love a lot of the same type of status accessories so if you walk around the mall, you'll probably notice the exact same Lululemon crossbody bag. They like status water bottles, like a Stanley Cup. This demographic is pretty homogenous.

They kind of all dress the same. They want the same trends. Well, we like that. I think so. Honestly, I think so. I keep thinking about this quote from the original Mean Girls, where someone goes,

I saw Katie Heron wearing army pants and flip-flops, so I bought army pants and flip-flops. Yes, yes. A big difference is kids today are starting to shop at a much younger age, and they're spending more. One survey of parents found that on average, eight to 13-year-olds in Los Angeles spend $54 a week. In New York, they spend $76 a week.

So that, I mean, that is way more than like the $2 allowance that I got. Right, I was going to say. That's what I was going about. I was buying like a book a month or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Kids are shopping and becoming indoctrinated, if you will, into consumer habits earlier and earlier. They're getting most of their content on TikTok.

So there is like TikTok shop or shopping on Amazon or shopping with their parents online. I think that makes this generation a little bit different from ours. And brands are trying to take advantage of this generation's shopping habits. That's next. Brands have been using influencers to market their products for years. But the amount of money they're spending on those influencers is growing by leaps and

bounds. Here's our colleague, Javi Lieber, again. The influencer marketing budget, it just gets higher and higher. I read a report that brands are going to spend $24 billion on influencer marketing this year, as opposed to in 2022, it was half of that. More recently, companies have started to catch on to how teens and tweens are spending money on stuff they see on social media. And to tap into that behavior, brands have been turning their attention to even younger

influencers. Everybody wants to work with teen influencers because they have power and sway over what kids are buying. Like I can tell you when I interviewed the CMO of Steve Madden they said that they are gonna be working more with teen influencers because it works so well for them. Some brands pay influencers to promote their products, anything from a few hundred bucks up to a million for some of the biggest names like Kim Kardashian. Someone like Demetra, who has a huge following,

can charge something like $20,000 for a single post on TikTok. Other times, companies will send young influencers free products, hoping that they'll post about the product and spread the word about the brand. Many of the companies working with young influencers are teen and tween-focused. But even brands that sell mainly to adults, including some very high-end ones, are sending their products to these influencers.

They had gotten boxes from YSL Beauty and from Armani Beauty. And those are luxury beauty brands. And the target demographic for those brands, I imagine, is way older, probably my age. Right, right. This is between and teen shopping demographic is really important. And I think that a lot of brands are realizing this.

So even if the shopper, the one spending money is a little bit older, they probably think it's important to get eyeballs at a younger age. But not all tweens are going to be able to buy these high-end products. I think that some of the more savvy brands are expanding their product offering to appeal to Gen Alpha. So, for example, I reported in my story, the women's wear brand, lifestyle brand, Love Shack Fancy. It's really popular with Gen Z and also, you know, it's pricey, it's a pricey women's wear brand.

They've been doing a bunch of Gen Alpha focused collaborations. For example, they just put out body mist sprays, you know, so kids can't really spend $250 on a skirt, but they could buy like a perfume spray. Javi, why is it important for brands to pay attention to how tweens are spending money? Big picture, this is a very important shopping demographic

for a couple of reasons. First of all, they are the future shopper. When I spoke to CEOs and brands for this story, everyone talked about customer loyalty. You know, so if a sneaker company or denim company hooks a kid at a young age, they'll be more likely to shop with them as they get older. And then I also want to say they influence their parents, they influence their older siblings. I spoke to so many moms when I was reporting about tweens buying skincare, you know, the moms were like,

I don't know what any of these ingredients are, but my 13 year old is telling me that I need hyaluronic acid. Yeah, they're like little dermatologists now. So they really do influence their family members and their parents and their siblings. And that impacts a brand's bottom line. Are there any concerns for the tweens or teens when it comes to brands being able to reach them so easily? There are sure there are parents who are annoyed that their daughters are now thinking about moisturizer and crop tops.

There's also the discussion of internet safety and who is watching these videos and who gets to interact with teens online, which is why I think it's super important for parents to know about this. They should know what their kids are consuming, who is influencing their teenagers to buy what and why, and to sort of like engage in the conversation.

Because so many teens are already on TikTok. What does it say about the kind of power that tweens have today when it comes to spending? The consumer appetite is just skewing younger and younger. Also, because this demographic just shop, shop, shops, they want more and more and more, they have the power to really swing a business's bottom line. You know, if you're popular with a teen demographic, that can really help your brand become hot,

especially on TikTok. What's your takeaway, Javi? I don't really want to give my kids without credit card ever. I mean, truly. Truly, truly. That's all for today, Wednesday, September 4th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.