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Spirited Facts About American Girl Dolls. Whether they had Kirsten, Molly, Samantha, Felicity, Addy, or Josefina, these wildly successful, historically accurate dolls defined the childhoods of many girls in the '9. Pleasant Rowland, had listened to anything but her gut, American Girls might never have existed. Here are a few things you might not have known about the dolls. THEY WERE INSPIRED BY A VISIT TO WILLIAMSBURG—AND A TRIP TO THE TOY STORE. In 1. 98. 4, textbook author, TV reporter, and teacher Pleasant Rowland accompanied her husband on a business trip to Williamsburg, Va.
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I loved the costumes, the homes, the accessories of everyday life—all of it completely engaged me,” Rowland told CNN Money in 2. I remember sitting on a bench in the shade, reflecting on what a poor job schools do of teaching history, and how sad it was that more kids couldn't visit this fabulous classroom of living history. Watch Bring It On: In It To Win It Mediafire on this page. Was there some way I could bring history alive for them, the way Williamsburg had for me?”A few months later, Rowland went Christmas shopping for her nieces, then 8 and 1. She wanted to get them each a doll—but she found that her only options were Barbie and Cabbage Patch Kids. Here I was, in a generation of women at the forefront of redefining women's roles, and yet our daughters were playing with dolls that celebrated being a teen queen or a mommy,” she said. My Williamsburg experience and my Christmas shopping experience collided, and the concept literally exploded in my brain.”She dashed off a postcard to her friend Valerie Tripp: “It said, ‘What do you think of this idea?
A series of books about 9- year- old girls growing up in different times in history, with a doll for each of the characters and historically accurate clothes and accessories with which girls could play out the stories?’ In essence, I would create a miniature version of the Colonial Williamsburg experience and take it to American girls using the very playthings—books and dolls—that girls have always loved.”She spent a wintry weekend creating a detailed outline of the concept. My pen flew as I tried to capture the idea that was just given to me—whole,” she said. This was my business plan!” 2. PLEASANT ROWLAND FUNDED THE COMPANY HERSELF ..
Rowland Reading Foundation, You. Tube. Rowland had $1. Pleasant Company herself. American Girl seemed like a million dollar idea,” she told CNN Money.
I put $2. 00,0. 00 aside in case all failed and plunged in.” The goal: Have the dolls ready by Christmas 1. BUT HAD NO IDEA HOW TO MAKE THE DOLLS OR THEIR HISTORICALLY ACCURATE ACCESSORIES. 1. Pleasant Company Spring catalogue. Rowland had experience writing books, but she was at a loss for where to begin with the dolls—she didn’t even have a model to work with, so she sent a friend to Chicago to look for one.
By the end of the second day, she found one at Marshall Field's, down in the storeroom, covered with dust,” Rowland said. Nobody had paid any attention to this doll because it had crossed eyes! The sales clerk had no idea where it had come from, but when we undressed the doll, sewn inside the underpants was a label that said ‘Gotz Puppenfabrik, Rodental, West Germany.’” Rowland made some calls, and not long after, found herself in Germany, “picking out fabrics and ribbons and clothes for the American Girl dolls.”The 1.
Germany, but the books would be made in the company’s Madison, Wisc. China. (These days, both the dolls and their accessories are made in China, and assembled in and shipped from Wisconsin.) 4. ROWLAND AND TRIPP CONCEPTUALIZED THE FIRST THREE DOLLS.
The first three dolls were Molly Mc. Intire, who lived during World War II; Samantha Parkington, who lived just after the turn of the 2. Kirsten Larson, who lived in the mid- 1.
We knew that we wanted Samantha to have lived at the turn of the last century because we felt that that was an enormous turning point for women,” Tripp said. The orphaned Samantha might have been inspired by a comment from Rowland’s 8- year- old niece. I asked her who she liked to read about,” Rowland told the Chicago Tribune in 1. Oh, Aunt Pleasant, orphans.’”5. THE COMPANY USED AN UNUSUAL MARKETING STRATEGY.“It was clear to me that American Girl was a thinking girl's product line, one that would not sell at Toys 'R' Us,” Rowland told CNN Money.
It wasn't meant to blare from the shelves on its packaging or visual appeal alone. It had a more important message—one that had to be delivered in a softer voice.” So rather than create a commercial, which the company didn’t have the budget for anyway, or sell to toy stores directly (they had told her the dolls, at $8. Rowland decided that the dolls would be sold by direct mail. FOCUS GROUPS INITIALLY HATED THE CONCEPT. When she was deep into development on the dolls, Rowland hired a marketing manager, who advised doing some focus groups with mothers.
When the leader explained the concept to the group, “they thought it was the worst idea they'd ever heard,” Rowland remembered. I was devastated—and terrified.
It had never really entered my head that this idea could fail!” But once the women saw a doll with her accessories and a sample book, they loved it. The experience crystallized a very important lesson for me: Success isn't in the concept. It's in the execution,” Rowland said. 7. EVERYONE SAID IT WAS A BAD IDEA. Even Tripp was initially skeptical. Rowland’s idea, she recalled at American Girl’s 2.
Are you kidding? Historical dolls in the day and age of Barbie?’” According to Fortune, industry insiders told Rowland that no one would buy dolls with a price tag higher than $4. Watch Homecoming Online Forbes there. Lands’ End, which was filling Rowland in on the tricks of the direct marketing trade, thought she would fail. The list managing company in charge of her direct mailing list advised her to be cautious and send out just 1. I said, ‘No way,’” Rowland recalled to CNN Money.
We had to take our shot that Christmas, and American Girl would either succeed or fail. So we mailed 5. 00,0. THE COMPANY WAS IMMEDIATELY SUCCESSFUL. Rowland’s gamble paid off. Between September and December 1. American Girl sold $1. And the numbers only went up from there: The company made $7.
Twenty- seven million dolls have been sold since 1. For all the money the company made subsequently,” Rowland told CNN Money, “none of it was as fun or rewarding as that first million dollars.”9. THE BOOKS WERE A KEY PART OF ROWLAND’S STRATEGY. Rowland Company Holiday Catalogue. For Rowland, the dolls and the books went hand in hand. To bring the stories alive, I wanted to have the play experience to make the learning alive—to touch, to feel,” she told the Chicago Tribune. Books are the heart of the collection, but the dolls are the way the stories are visualized and experienced as little girls act out the stories using the dolls.
They came together. I never conceived of one without the other.” Rowland described the combination of learning and play as “chocolate cake with vitamins.”1. THE ORIGINAL DOLLS CAME WITH SIX BOOKS THAT FOLLOWED NAMING CONVENTIONS. From 1. 98. 6 up through 2. Meet [Character]: An American Girl[Character] Learns a Lesson: A School Story[Character’s] Surprise: A Christmas Story. Happy Birthday, [Character]!: A Springtime Story[Character] Saves the Day: A Summer Story. Changes for [Character]: A Winter Story.
Each book cost $1. Kit, released in 2. The dolls released starting with Kaya in 2. With the rebranding of the historical line as Be. Forever in 2. 01. Maryellen, the first new character released after rebranding, only ever had stories in two volumes. 1.
ROWLAND WAS DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER EARLY IN THE COMPANY'S HISTORY. After Pleasant Company’s second year in business, Rowland moved its headquarters from “a broken- down warehouse with one freight elevator” to a brand new space, just in time for for its third holiday season. Then, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I cut the ribbon on the new warehouse in the morning and went into the hospital that afternoon to have surgery,” she said.
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