Teenage taste land

For the back-to-school season, Staples is tapping a new market: teens.

Duh.

But for years, the segment wasn't an obvious one for the Framingham office supplier. Instead Staples catered to grade school children and their parents believing that this age group spent more on school supplies. But research the chain conducted found that teens ages 15 to 17 spend $76 on average for back-to-school supplies, compared to about $55 for children ages 8 to 11. Moreover, about 47 percent of parents say that teens ages 15 to 17 decide where to shop.

So this back-to-school season, Staples is trotting out 150 items geared toward teens (think zebra-striped computer mouse) and even hired its first celebrity spokeswoman, Ashley Tisdale , a bright-eyed 21-year-old best known for her roles in ``High School Musical" and the Disney show ``The Suite Life of Zach and Cody." She's appearing on Staples' back-to-school circulars, autographing school supplies, and planning to hang out with the winner of a Staples shopping spree sweepstakes.

``We recognized that the needs for the teen customer have been somewhat overlooked," said Petter Knutrud , Staples' vice president and general merchandising manager. ``There's not one place they can get fashion and organization."

For Staples, the back-to-school season is the biggest in terms of customer traffic. It's when the store, over a period of about eight weeks, converts itself from a chain for small business and home-office shoppers into a haven for teachers and students scrambling for school supplies. The National Retail Federation estimates that the average shopper will spend about $86 on schools supplies this year, up from $81 last year.

Going after the teen market makes sense, retail analysts say, especially as rivals such as Wal-Mart and Target make it nearly impossible to compete on prices for basic school supplies. Phil Rist , of BIGResearch, a Columbus, Ohio, market research group, said discounters increasingly use must-have items, such as notebooks and pencils, as ``loss leaders" -- meaning merchants are willing to take a loss on these products because the discounts get customers into the store who will spend money on other, more profitable items.

``Marketing to teens allows Staples to sell a much wider selection of products, instead of basic supplies," said Marshal Cohen , chief retail analyst at market research firm NPD Group in Port Washington, N.Y. ``They can start selling some really cool things in a sexy way. They're trying to go out of their way to say to teens, `This is the place to go.' "

Office Depot, the Delray Beach, Fla. , office supplies chain, is also on the hunt for teen shoppers, signing its first celebrity back-to-school endorser this year with the young NASCAR superstar Carl Edwards . The company introduced eco-friendly notebooks, its own brand of backpacks with pockets for cellphones, laptops, and digital music players, and exclusive Nike portfolios and binders -- all with teens in mind.

Staples began its research into the teenage mind last year, having teens keep diaries on their shopping experiences and holding focus groups. Teens said they needed better backpacks, with pockets to hold water bottles, MP3 players, and laptops. They wanted more planners and more stuff for their lockers -- a sacred place teens viewed as ``the first space that they had that no one was telling them what to do in there," according to Staples's creative director Teresa Herd.

The chain doubled its backpack assortment -- offering 156 different styles and colors this year -- and expanded its selection in the higher-end $60 bags. The chain created its own line of student planners in funky covers and colors. Locker knickknacks -- like the LockerMate Locker Trio Bag that has storage for cellphones or iPods, plus a mirror and dry-erase board -- now sit on display near store entrances .

And Staples wanted to make sure they got the fashion right. For the first time, Staples worked with trend companies to determine the season's hottest colors and then told vendors to make back-to-school merchandise in them.

``This year we selected hot pink, chartreuse green, and a brown, and when we did that we got a little bit of resistance from some people who were saying `I would never put brown with green. My mother would kill me if I wore pink with brown.' " Herd said. ``But it goes back to our target audience, which this is year is parents of teens and teens. And they're a little bit different."

But the chain says it hasn't turned its back on the younger students -- just adjusted its target audience. That hasn't sat well with everyone, especially the kids under 13 who are writing Staples and asking why they're not allowed to enter the back-to-school sweepstakes for a chance to shop with tween queen Tisdale.

For her part, Tisdale says she's proud to be the Staples poster child. In a phone interview from Los Angeles, Tisdale said, ``When I was in high school, I loved at the end of the summer to go shopping at Staples. I don't know why I got so excited, but I loved getting organized, buying new binders. It was reinventing myself for a new year."

And even though she's not in school anymore, Tisdale said she still shops at Staples for Sharpie markers -- to sign autographs, of course.

Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com.