Maine mail-order house appeals to children

PORTLAND — A brother and sister created a mail-order children’s clothing catalog that resembles a bedtime storybook full of glossy advertising, and an analyst said the marketing strategy is similar to that used on Saturday morning television.

Greg Arruda and Dede Perkins insisted they were not trying to copy national advertising that targets youngsters. But when a few local parents read the story to their youngsters, the kids noticed the ads and started clamoring for the products shown in The Dancing Elephant’s Catalog.

“It was directed at the mother,” Perkins said as she and her brother prepared to mail out copies of the catalog nationwide this week. “I didn’t think the kids would say, `I want the dime-store sleeping bag,’ but they did.”

The catalog features an elephant named Merriweather, and the story is surrounded by color illustrations of the elephant teaching children about the production of apple cider. Placed around the words and pictures showing Merriweather’s adventures are full-color photographs of children wearing clothing available by mail order, as well as order forms and a toll-free phone number.

The catalog’s approach might seem like a new twist on the marketing strategies employed on Saturday morning cartoons and at fast-food restaurants with playgrounds and toy prizes, but Arruda and Perkins said that was not what they had in mind.

Rather, they were thinking of the success Perkins had when she opened her upscale children’s clothing store in Portland, also called The Dancing Elephant, and included a small play area for children.

“A lot of kids’ clothing stores and a lot of kids’ catalogs are just boring — they just hang up the clothing,” Perkins said. “The moms loved the fact that we liked the kids. We had things for the kids to do.”

When she and her brother decided to make an investment of nearly $100,000 to start the mail-order business, they wanted some way to keep the children involved. They brainstormed their way into an idea for the storybook catalog, and spent hours with friends and relatives collaborating on a plot.

Arruda, a former teacher, wanted to make sure that the story is educational as well as entertaining.

“We don’t want them to be trite,” Arruda said. The apple cider story will be followed by sequels in new catalogs, if the mail-order strategy works.

A New York analyst who follows children’s retailing said the Portland company may have stumbled onto a powerful marketing tool.

Monroe Greenstein of Bear Stearns had not seen The Dancing Elephant’s Catalog or anything like it in the children’s mail-order industry, but he said the approach is similar to tactics used by other companies that pitch their products to children in stores and through the media.

“That kind of marketing strategy began with children’s television,” Greenstein said. “Some people could suggest it was 30-minute ads. It’s an extremely effective form of almost subliminal advertising.”

Perkins said that after she and her brother let several local people read the catalog to their children, in a brief, unscientific survey, they were surprised at the interest they generated among the kids themselves.

“I hate to admit it, but none of this was conscious. It was all gut instinct,” Perkins said. “I know in the back of our minds we knew there were playgrounds at McDonalds, but it wasn’t like we were trying to get these people.”

An initial mailing of 55,000 copies of the catalog is being shipped to previous customers of The Dancing Elephant, as well as names from mailing lists that Arruda and Perkins purchased. They are also paying to have thousands of copies of an order form included in packages mailed out through existing children’s mail-order businesses.