Knowing your target audience is important, and when high school students fall into that category for your company, you might be struggling to come up with products geared toward that demographic. Fortunately, regardless of whether the business is big or small, you can develop some products to attract this crowd.
Trending Items
Many high school students love to keep up with trends. Checking out the latest fashion and sports magazines can help you to better understand what items are popular with this age group. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be filling your shelves with fidget toys or poppers, which are often thought of when considering trending items. It also refers to popular tv shows or quotes. For example, you might soon find that the company’s shelves are filled with water bottles, hoodies or neat stickers with a quote or icon from a trending tv show. Though trending items can earn you a lot of money, it is also one of the more volatile products to keep on your shelf since the trend can change in an instant. For that reason, it’s recommended to consider making small orders often instead of one large order of products. That way, you don’t have a significant amount of excess stock after the main part of the trend has passed.
Celebrity Merchandise
Students of this age tend to love all different types of celebrities, from musicians to famous actors in top sitcoms. Knowing the popular celebrities of the moment is important. Once you conduct this research, you can begin to sell merchandise that allows youngsters to pay homage to their favorite late-night comedian or to the coolest rockstar. Posters and shirts are very popular for this type of fanship. However, some companies even sell candles that are marketed to “smell like” specific celebrities. These types of products may do even better than a t-shirt since it is unique and likely not available in many other stores in town. When it comes to celebrity merchandise, however, it is ideal that you consider who is trending locally. Reviewing local Facebook and Reddit groups can give insight into who is being talked about in the local area. Not all celebrities are rock stars or actors, some celebrities may even be political. Greta Thunberg, for example, was (and maybe still is) very popular among teens in certain regions.
School-spirit Items
If your business is located in a town with a lot of high school spirit or if you’re located close to a school, you can sell school-related products to teenagers. This could be things like printed spirit posters or yard signs with the team name and logo on them. For example, you can order wholesale 18X24 custom yard signs at the beginning of the year, and then when a game is coming up, you can move the signs near the entry of your business. That way they are front and center when teenagers come into your store. A great thing about high school merchandise is that it can be resold year after year to athletes who want to show off their pride to the community. You might also decide to partner with the bookstore at the local high school to provide them with merchandise as well.
Snacks and Drinks
When you have teenagers of your own, you’re likely aware of how they tend to head right to the fridge when they get home from school. Many kids of this age love candy bars, popcorn, potato chips, and soda. Placing these products next to things like gift cards to the local movie theater makes for a perfect date-night bundle, which is perfect for this age group. Of course, you could also market some healthier products to the teens. This will likely target the athletes and teenagers that are more concerned with their body image. In addition, the healthier products are likely to attract the attention of parents and school administrators as well.
Technology Gear
Teenagers tend to spend a lot of time on their phones. Even if your company does not have the ability to sell phones, you can sell accessories and other related products. For example, phone cases with lanyards on them, phone pop sockets and other accessories of that type tend to sell well with teenagers. You might even want to roll out a new line of cell phone cases that has a local high school logo on it, if you want to really focus on the teenagers. Another possibility is that your business could come up with an app that is marketed toward teens. This is especially useful if you want to target a local community. Creating an app that is specific for teens in that area for meetups, date ideas, and cost breakdown for each activity, for example, could be really useful to teenagers. For a product like this, you could even reach out to local restaurants and businesses that want to reach teenagers and sell sponsorship opportunities or deals that help earn you money while improving the user experience for the teens using the product.
If you’re trying to find products to sell to teenagers, you might feel at a bit of a loss. Fortunately, this age group has a number of interests, and you can certainly make some sales based on smart ideas. Consider customizing products to fit the teenagers in your area. Whether that is by including school logos or celebrity posters, this type of customization will further target a teenager.