"Two Teens, One Brand, Infinite Possibilities"

By Michelle Chihara, AlterNet. Posted January 21, 2002.

Imagine that you've never had a bad hair day. Ever. At least, not since you've had hair. Imagine having had stylists since the age of nine months. Imagine having your own clothing line at age 15.

Imagine having executives from the likes of Fox TV and AOL Time Warner attend a yearly meeting in your honor. Imagine that that meeting is called a "summit."

The Olsen twins don't have to imagine. The Olsen twin "summit" took place in mid-January, according to a publicist at Warner Bros. The two teens have grown up famous, and are now poised to become moguls to rival Oprah. Either that, or they're poised to go down in flames that will dwarf the publicity around the Different Strokes scandals by a magnitude of, well, two.

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are twin stars who made their chipper, dimpled debut at nine months of age, on the chipper, dimpled sitcom Full House. That was in 1987. Since then, Full House has faded into syndicated backwaters, and the show's lead character, hunky uncle Jessie, has been relegated to How To Marry A Billionaire, A Christmas Story, the TV movie. Most adults have long since forgotten the pig-tailed kid(s) who said, "You got it, dude!" (Did you even know there were two of them? The two split the role of one character).

But the Olsen twins never went away, they just went tween -- to the world of girls between 4 and 14, or 6 and 16, depending on which marketer you're talking to. Over the last decade, they have built a billion dollar multi-media and fashion empire based on expert targeting of the tween market. Now, with their Sweet Sixteen on the horizon in June, they are threatening to throw themselves at more mature markets.

Sometime last spring, adults started to take note of the millions pouring into the Olsens. Last May, the New York Times ran a gushing profile about the Olsen twin "juggernaut," noting the girls' "unusual coloring ... that makes you think of wildflowers and the beach" (the Olsen twins are blond and blue-eyed). The Washington Post ran a similar piece. Last October, the Hollywood Reporter dedicated an entire special issue to the "The Most Powerful Young Women in Hollywood." Vanity Fair included a full-page photo and profile in their January issue.

The grown-up attention, which smacks of a publicity push, culminated last week with a grown-up announcement: the twins are "bowing out" of their ABC Family sitcom, "So Little Time."

"TV is five days a week," says their publicist, Michael Pagnotta. "They made a decision that they couldn't do everything well and continue to do well in school." Dropping the TV show will leave room for the feature deals, which Pagnotta won't name but says are pending. "They're talking about a few things right now. People are reaching out to them, they are talking to people who are interested in helping them make that transition."

Hollywood, here they come.

At first glance, it seems that the twins' march to stardom is unstoppable, a cute, double river flowing towards the sea. "I just think there's too much momentum," said Robert Thorne, CEO of the Olsen twin company, DualStar Entertainment Group, in a New York Times article. "And they're almost a monopoly. It would be hard to knock them off their perch."

The Eminence Grise

Thorne was the girls' attorney before he became the head of their corporation. He was the driving force behind the creation of Dualstar and the Mary-Kate and Ashley brand. He has been working with them since they were 4.

With Thorne's dogged help, Mary-Kate and Ashley has become a multi-national brand. Their own fashion line hangs in dedicated tracts, or "stores within a store," at Wal-Mart. The Mattel-made Olsen twin dolls outsell Britney's, second only to Barbie. Their video games, videos and CDs sell internationally. The Mary-Kate and Ashley brand has the heaviest of corporate hitters in its corner. AOL Time Warner does their videos and their AOL tie-in. Fox Family Channel aired their sitcom. HarperCollins published all 30 odd million of their books. Mary-Kate & Ashley branded products are poised to generate close to $800 million in retail sales in 2002, according to the New York Times.

Of course, at age 4, the girls couldn't have decided to dominate a niche market and win millions upon millions of international fans. Thorne, with the cooperation of their family and a couple other execs, was the architect for all that. But by all accounts so far, Thorne has been more than fair about divvying up the loot, and the twins have as much power as is practical for girls their age. They are very rich, on paper, and will come into control of their money at age 18.

All this comes despite the eerie absence of, for lack of a better term, quality product. Mary-Kate and Ashley have put out incredible amounts of straight-to-video, poorly scripted fluff. Granted, production values have improved since the original short "Our First Video," especially in their more recent feature-length fare. But we're not talking Oscar winning moments.

No matter, it sells. "The Olsen Twins: Passport to Paris" generated more than $12 million in consumer retail spending, according to industry publication Video Business. Their first CD was called "I Am The Cute One," and featured the lyrics, belted out in Star Search style, with a lisp: "She is the older, I am the younger/ So after all, is there any wonder/ I am the cute one, she's just my sister."

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