International Herald Tribune:
The idea came to Tito Loizeau in a Buenos Aires shopping mall 3 years ago: Build a Barbie-themed store and little girls and their parents’ money will follow.
Loizeau’s marketing company had set up a small House of Barbie promotion for Mattel Inc. inside the mall. He was astounded by the reaction: Girls waited for hours to get in, and mothers made offers on clothes he’d hung up for decoration - never mind that they didn’t have anything to do with Barbie.
‘It would be a pink shirt you could buy anywhere in the mall,’ Loizeau said, ‘But they’d want the shirt because it was associated with Barbie.’
So he set out to open the world’s first Barbie ‘fashion-tainment’ store, where girls can get glittery hairdos and make up at the Barbie beauty parlor or try on gowns and play with dolls in the Barbie playroom, all while their parents nibble pink-frosted desserts in the Barbie cafe.
Loizeau, 37, spent a year persuading El Segundo, California-based Mattel to license the idea. Then he and 2 associates put up $500,000, or €340,000 of their own money to open the Barbie Store.
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