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American Girl Place

American Girl stars in L.A. with third prototype store.

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Every time Mattel has set up a new American Girl Place – first in Chicago, then in New York – it finds itself challenged to improve on an awfully good recipe.

American Girl's newest home is in The Grove, the upscale mall in central Los Angeles. And yes, it has many of the same details that enthrall young girls and their mothers on Michigan and Fifth avenues. But the expression of those details has been tweaked.

“Each flagship needs to feel familiar, yet different,” says John Bricker, creative director of Gensler, the project's design firm. “The L.A. store is a great opportunity to evolve the design. We wanted this location to be an exciting experiential destination – even to girls who had already been to other American Girl stores.

This new 40,000-square-foot store reflects an internally generated rebranding. “The color palette and design tool box now seen here in L.A. will eventually appear in other stores,” says Shane McCall, the retailer's director of visual merchandising resources.

The merchandising of the store and the prioritization of certain categories reflect the philosophy of American Girl as masterminded by founder Pleasant Rowland, a former educator and children's publisher. During a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, she was frustrated in being unable to find quality dolls that would appeal to 7- to-12-year-old girls. So she came up with the idea of bringing history to life with a series of historical novels detailing the lives of plucky 9-year-olds at various points of American history. Accompanying dolls and accessories would allow the young readers to play out scenes of the books.

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At the time, industry veterans thought her venture was nuts. (Everyone “knew” that girls over the age of 6 wouldn't play with dolls.) But Rowland believed that if the dolls had compelling back stories and the content was accurate and rigorously researched, slightly older girls would connect with them.

Connection completed! As of now, 111 million American Girl books have been sold since 1986 and American Girl is now one of the top 15 children's publishers in the nation. And more than 12 million American Girl dolls have been sold. Mattel bought the company from Rowland for $700 million in 1998.

So while the brand continues to grow, how is American Girl improving its store environments? What's the same in Los Angeles and what's different?

As at the other American Girl flagships, the visitors' experience of the Los Angeles store follows the logic of the brand. Without the stories, the dolls wouldn't appeal to this tween age group, so the “library” (bookstore) is located near the entrance, just beyond the concierge desk. The grape-jelly purple of the new palette makes a dominant appearance in the custom carpet-tile rug (a checkerboard of solid squares and tone-on-tone stripes and stars), leaving plenty of room between cases for kids and mothers to plunk themselves down on the floor and read aloud together.

Lavender-circus-tent-broad-vertical-striped wallpaper adds to the festiveness of the space. Echoing the literary foundations of the brand, all doll merchandise is in boxes that match the store finishes.

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Abutting the bookstore at the back of the first floor is the Doll Hair Salon, where girls can set their dolls down in miniature salon chairs for makeovers. Retro dressing room mirrors are angled overhead.

“It's always a challenge to entice traffic to the back of a store and up an escalator,” says Bricker, “and here we didn't want to have lots of signs. A lot of the youngest visitors might not know how to read yet, anyway. Our architectural solution is a shooting star 'swoosh' inset into the ceiling that intuitively directs people through the space.” The inset lights have purple gels that call out the sparkles in the ceiling's wallpaper.

On the second floor, in the “Just Like You” dolls section, is what the store calls “a chorus line” of multi-ethnic dolls. Shoppers can pick a doll's skin, haircolor and eye color and buy outfits for herself that match her doll's. The fashion-consciousness is very trendy. The dolls are used as mannequins for outfits like Asian chongsam dresses, flouncy paisley hippie dresses and sports clothes, something for every girl, whether she prefers to “star” as a tomboy or a dress-up diva.

Lots of touches throughout the store make it clear that this environment is oriented for little girls first, adults second (and boys at their peril). The furniture, merchandise and sightlines are geared towards people 4 and 5 feet tall, the merchandise shelved from the floor up. To make it easy for girls to get the shopping help they need, there are pads of illustrated merchandise slips mounted at handrail height. For the waiting area of the photo studio (where girls can be photographed with their doll in a fake American Girl magazine cover), there are cushy cubes of various heights.

The second floor has a “main street” corridor with a red carpet with a big star/little star pattern. Off the corridor are various chambers for each of the historic American Girls. Each character's space includes period music and a museum-style diorama (viewable from three sides) with period furniture and artifacts, each with windows onto that character's world. Cleverly installed videos play just outside door frames or window frames.

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The “Bitty Baby” and “Bitty Twin” product area, for girls about 3 years old, is decorated in Easter egg pastels with white wood finishes. A structural column was turned into a motorized maypole. These infants have cribs with baby bumpers, mobiles and McClaren-style strollers and miniature car seats – everything a responsible mother would buy a child today.

American Girl Place is a miniature world designed to keep mothers and daughters entertained for at least half a day. In addition to the shopping, there is a full theater where the 75-minute American Girl Revue (a musical featuring eight children and four adults) takes place. There is a doll-hospital admissions desk. Computer stations link to online American Girl games.

As no store catering to girls and moms would be complete without some serious dining involved, a café serves brunch, lunch, tea and dinner. As in Chicago and New York, this café has a mad-hatter feel, a palette of black and white, with fuchsia Gerber daisies. Black and white awning stripes climb up to the dado, with fabric window shades to match. Above the chair line, fuchsia daisy-patterned wallpaper hugs the walls. Private party rooms are available, each with fantastical flipped bouquet chandeliers. Also, unique to the Los Angeles location is a big covered terrace.

Rowland always said her “chocolate cake with vitamins” empowerment approach to history would work with this previously ignored tween girl audience. Retail history has certainly proved her right. Now Mattel's only worry is that American Girl might outsell Barbie, the elder of its sub-brands. Even the nicest little girls sometimes get competitive.

Client: American Girl Place, Middleton, Wis.
Ellen Brothers, president
Jeff Freeman, senior vp, corporate operations
Wade Opland, vp, retail
Tim Severance, director, retail operations
Kathy Monetti, vp, brand marketing
Shane McCall, director, visual merchandising resources
Pat Rebholz, project engineer
Barbara Smith, senior manager, creative

Design/Architect: Gensler, New York
Walter Hunt Jr., managing principal
Kathleen Jordan, project director
John Bricker, creative director
Mark Morton, design director
Tom Rosenkilde, project manager (design and documentation)
Carolina Tombolesi, project manager (implementation)
Brian Sheehan, project manager (graphics & branding)
Arpy Hatzikian, code and expediting
Peg Harris, senior designer
Laura Bellion, ff&e
Daisy Kim, job captain
Katharine O'Toole, job captain
Mike Blaser, job captain

Outside Design Consultants: TMAD Taylor & Gaines, Pasadena, Calif. (MEP engineers)
KPFF Consulting Engineers, Los Angeles (structural engineers)
Hillman DiBernardo Leiter Castelli, New York (lighting)
Fisher Dachs Associates, New York (theater design consultant)
Cini Little Intl., South Pasadena, Calif. (food service consultant)
Cerami & Associates, New York (acoustical and audiovisual consultant)

General Contractor: DPR Construction Inc., Newport Beach, Calif.
Jim Washburn, principal-in-charge

Audiovisual: , Grayslake, Ill.

Awnings: EIDE Industries, Cerritos, Calif.

Custom Light Fixtures: Winona, Winona, Minn.

Fixtures: Montbleau, San Diego

Flooring: Bloomsburg Carpet, New York
Milliken & Co., Spartanburg, S.C.
Wilsonart Intl., Temple, Texas
Stone Panels Inc., Coppell, Texas

Furniture: Covers Unlimited, Chicago

Lighting: Lightolier, Fall River, Mass.
Ardee Lighting, Shelby, N.C.
Litelab Corp., Buffalo, N.Y.
RSA Lighting, Van Nuys, Calif.
Legion, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Props and Decoratives: Superior Specialties, Chicago

Signage/Graphics: Andres Imaging, Chicago

Wallcoverings/Materials: Wolf Gordon, New York
Maya Romanoff, Chicago
Bergamo, Mount Vernon, N.Y.

Photography: Michael Weschler, New York and Los Angeles

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