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By Karen Springen
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Several times a month, Linda Glenn, 57, of Luck, Wis., puts on one of her 97 red hats and heads to high tea, a play or a parade with a few dozen similarly attired women. She is "founding queen mother" of the Rowdy Red Hat Mamas of northern Wisconsin--one of 41,200 chapters of the Red Hat Society, a seven-year-old for-profit group based in Fullerton, Calif. devoted to fun and frivolity for women over 50. Like the nation's 1.5 million or so other "Red Hatters," she wears red hats and purple clothes--the more outrageous, the better. Feather boas and blinky-light finger rings are particularly popular with the Wisconsin chapter's 64 members, ages up to 92.
The society dates back to 1997, when founder Sue Ellen Cooper, now 60, gave a friend who was turning 55 a red hat and a copy of the Jenny Joseph poem, "Warning," about an aging woman who wears a red hat and a purple dress. Cooper then gave hats to three other close friends. In 1998, Cooper and these four women wore their red hats with purple outfits to high tea--and the group began.
Some Red Hat groups do charity, but it's by no means required or even encouraged. "You've been a caretaker. You've given to charity," says Sabrina Contreras, vice president of merchandising and product development for the Red Hat Society. "We're off our rockers, not in our rockers," she says. "To our women, red means go."
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Members like Glenn favor red cowboy hats for picnics, red Southern belle hats for tea, red woolly hats for snowy days and red baseball caps for casual wear. "I never leave the house without a red hat any more," she says. Many Hatters invest heavily in red and purple stuff--from the paint on her bedroom walls to her new official Red Hat Society sneakers made by Keds.
Glenn and her cohorts aren't gloomy about being over 50. "We celebrate it," she says. Mostly they celebrate by buying anything red from luggage to Duncan Hines red velvet cake mixes. "I call it the red and purple machine," says Glenn. "We are the largest market for red and purple, no matter what it is. We're a market you can't feed fast enough. Everything they manufacture, we gobble up."
Marketers are finally catching onto the buying power of aging boomers like Glenn. Despite all the attention that goes to 18- to 35-year-olds, women 50 and older are the nation's biggest shoppers, says Marshall Cohen, chief industry analyst for the NPD Group, a market-research company. Last year they spent $22.3 billion on apparel--23 percent of all female spending on clothes, says Cohen. "Men, when they retire, they retire. Women continue to be big consumers ... They're still living like they're 30. They still think they're 30, and some of them even look like they're 30."
"It's fascinating for me as a 50-year-old woman," says Peggy Northrop, editor in chief of More magazine, which is targeted at women in their 40s and 50s. "Why have I been invisible?" No more. Ad pages at More are up 16 percent over last year (advertisers include Dove and Revlon), and circulation jumped from 320,000 at its 1998 launch to 1.1 million today.
"Marketers would be remiss if they did not look at the 50-plus crowd. They have disposable income," says AARP spokesman Tom Otwell. "It's an enormous demographic bubble."
But until recently, few companies noticed. "This demographic has been largely ignored by a lot of marketers, [who] typically go after young adults," says Tim Calkins, a clinical associate professor who teaches marketing strategy and branding at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Tie-ins between Red Hat and products like Keds and Roman Meal bread make sense, he says. "You could compare this to NASCAR, which is 'marketers team up with NASCAR to reach a certain demographic group.' You'll see marketers team up with Red Hat. The challenge for marketers today is to move beyond traditional TV and print advertising ... This is a perfect group to affiliate with. It's very positive."
Indeed, Red Hat Society's mantra is one of fun, fun, fun, which includes shopping, shopping, shopping. "The natural nature of women is to nurture. However, we're giving each other permission to go to recess," says founder Cooper, a former stay-at-home mother who later worked as an illustrator and mural painter. She calls herself "exalted queen mother" because chapter leaders like to call themselves "queen mothers." She worries that making the Red Hat Society "another place to work on a committee" makes it not fun any more. "This is totally a play group," she says. Cooper calls her group a "disorganization" of more than 35,000 chapters in all 50 states and 25 countries.
After Cooper heard from younger women who wanted to join, she started "pink hatters"--the women under 50 who wear pink hats and lavender clothes until they "reduate," the society's term for turning 50 and earning the red hat. Today 5 to 8 percent of members are pink hatters. "We have to save the red and purple for those of us who've earned it," says Cooper.
For a disorganization, the Red Hat Society runs like a well-oiled machine. Glenn is already packing 14 of her red hats, along with a reversible red and purple cape, a feather boa and a tiara for the Red Hat Society's annual convention this June 26-29 at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas--one of the largest hotels in the city. More than 5,000 Red Hatters will join her for the sold-out "Red Hat Society Big Deal Convention." For about $400, Red Hatter conventioneers can come and shop at a temporary 33,000-square-foot Red Hat Society store filled with Red Hat products and merchandise from 30 licensed partners. At this week's gathering, the Red Hat Society will announce its new official travel provider (Carlson) and its new co-branded MasterCard.
"Shopping is our favorite sport; our new credit card will be our official sports equipment," says Contreras, the VP of merchandising and product development. After the big Vegas convention, the Red Hat cultural-commercial juggernaut rolls on. The Society is holding its "expo," in Houston Oct. 1-2. The event is open to the public and is part inspirational meeting, part shopping spree. But the most glamorous Red Hat event of the year may be the induction of a famous baby boomer into the Red Hat phase of life. Minnie Mouse is turning 50 and, the Red Hats will be at Disneyland in California Nov. 3-6 to help her "reduate." Can FOX television's Marge Simpson be far behind?
Despite all the fun and feathers, the Red Hat Society is big business. The company will not divulge its revenues but the popularity of some of their products gives some indication of their success. Some 400,000 women have bought Cooper's 2004 book, "The Red Hat Society: Fun and Friendship After Fifty." Last month Cooper also published "The Red Hat Society's Laugh Lines," and she is working on a new book with how-to-live advice from Red Hatters, which will come out next spring. In December of 2004, the society launched a $4.99 monthly magazine--LifeStyle: The Official Publication of the Red Hat Society--with 33,000 subscribers. "I've seen magazines aimed at our demographic, but they kind of challenge you to kill yourself to keep looking as young as you can," says Cooper. "That's too much of a burden." The group officially licenses Red Hat Society products, which range from Christopher Radko glass ornaments to Candamar Designs needlework and the Red Hat Keds which sell for $35 to $50. Then there are the hats, which run from $12 to $120 for the "Ms. Drama Purple on Red." The loot sells online at redhatsociety.com or at outlets such as Wal-Mart and Target. Unofficial red-item merchants can be found on eBay or at flea markets.
Beth Spangler, 58, a retired bookkeeper from Aurora, Colo., joins Red Hatters for events like attending "Menopause: the Musical" and dinners. "We had one restaurant that told us we couldn't come back because we were just too noisy for their other patrons," says Spangler. That may be the only time the Red Hatters have ever been bad for business.
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