The children’s retailer Maisonette describes itself on its online homepage as “clothes and decor for kids and babies,” and the media has called it “the Net-a-Porter for kids.” Now, the company is taking a big bet on a new vertical: tweens.
Launching this week, Maisonette’s tween vertical is called “Neon Rebels.” It combines apparel and decor from over 100 brands all catered toward the 7-14 set. Maisonette president AJ Nicholas told Glossy the new vertical targets millennial parents who have shopped with the company since it launched in 2017. Those customers’ kids are now growing up, and Maisonette wanted a new category to stay relevant to them as their children age into new brackets.
“It’s an interesting market to serve because there are really two customers,” Nicholas said. Tweens are of the age where they start to exert more influence over what they wear and what clothes are bought for them. “The primary customer is the parent. They’re the one making the purchase. But if your kid doesn’t want to wear something, you don’t want to spend your money on it.”
Nicholas said that over 20% of Maisonette’s customers now have at least one child over the age of seven. The team has also heard from customers for several years that they want tween clothes. That gave Maisonette the confidence to launch Neon Rebels with over 100 brands. Many are brands Maisonette already carried and are best-sellers, like LoveShackFancy. Others are debuts, like Montana Maple, the newly-launched tween line from Australian kids brand Marlo, which is debuting on Neon Rebels. Other brands include DL1961, State and Pleat, plus bath and body products from brands like JB Skrub. Maisonette is a curated marketplace using a drop-ship model, with no inventory held by the company.
The idea was to give tweens maximum freedom to browse the catalog and find styles on their own with parental approval, rather than the younger-child approach of letting the parent take the lead on browsing. Maisonette and Neon Rebels are separate experiences on the same online store. While Maisonette has imagery and copy targeted toward parents, along with parent-focused home products like tableware and bedding, Neon Rebels is designed for tweens to browse themselves, and puts more emphasis on products like electronics and beauty products.
“When building Neon Rebels, we tapped directly into our own memories to capture that magic and wonder of flipping through magazines and catalogs in the ’90s,” said Sylvana Ward Durrett, co-founder of Maisonette and board director. “From the site experience to the creative curation, we built a space where both generations see themselves and feel inspired.”
Nicholas said the Maisonette team consulted many tweens to create Neon Rebels, particularly their own. Maisonette has around 20 employees with 25 children between them who are regularly consulted on products, brands and fit. Apparel makes up around 60% of Maisonette’s business — it carries over 750 apparel brands, 100 of which also operate in the tween space. Maisonette declined to share specific revenue dollars, but the company is profitable, with profits growing 200% since 2023. Maisonette is on track to reach 80% year-over-year revenue growth this year, and tween revenue has grown by 30% in the last three years. Average order value for tween product sales is 60% higher than Maisonette’s average.
Maisonette merchandises its online store with a team of buyers. It hired a tween-focused buyer just over a year ago to prepare for the launch. Nicholas said apparel is the biggest category for tweens, but beauty, home and electronics are all sizable categories, in terms of sales, that she expects will grow over time.
One novel approach Maisonette is taking with Neon Rebels is in its marketing. While the team is planning a multi-channel marketing push around the new tween category, not every channel will target both parents and children. Nicholas said the team is foregoing any social media advertising targeted at tweens, due to the harmful effects of too much social media usage on children. It’s a risky move, particularly given the fact that over 60% of tweens are actively influenced by content creators on social media. But Nicholas said the trade-off to appeal to parents is worth it.
“We’ve been really thoughtful about how we want to market in this space,” Nicholas said. “It’s a sensitive topic. So we made a decision not to market to tweens on social media. On social, the approach is entirely targeted at parents. We will have offline marketing pushes for kids, like a print catalog [targeted at existing customers whose kids are aging up] coming in the fourth quarter and in-person events with kids in September.”
“Social is an important part of our marketing mix, but we just felt strongly that the child doesn’t need to be on Instagram or on TikTok,” Nicholas added.
The tween and teen fashion markets are both valuable and growing, with much competition. Target and Pacsun recently launched a tween-focused line called Pacsun Kids, for example. Meanwhile, teen-focused brands like Garage and American Eagle are billion-dollar-plus brands. A recent study from DKC found that Gen Alpha influences $95 billion in purchases annually in the U.S.
