Hobbies And Interests
The Beginning
In 1986, educator and textbook writer Pleasant Rowland launched a line of dolls based on 9-year-old fictional girls from different periods in American history. Each doll came to life with books, clothes and accessories. The dolls were available by mail-order catalog only but became an instant hit, with almost $2 million in sales in the first four months. The product line quickly grew to include eight dolls, each from a specific historical period: Kaya (1764), Felicity (1774), Josefina (1824), Kirsten (1854), Addy (1864), Samantha (1904), Kit (1934) and Molly (1944).
Big Growth
The Pleasant Company launched "American Girl" magazine in 1992. The magazine celebrated the achievements of girls and focused on boosting their self-esteem. In 1995, the company released baby dolls for preschoolers and the 18-inch dolls Just Like Me dolls. Just Like Me dolls allowed girls to choose the doll's hair color, complexion and accessories. They dolls were renamed My American Girl dolls in 2010.
Birth of the Boom
The company launched its own Internet store in 1997, and its first retail store in 1998 in Chicago. The three-story building featured a café for mothers and daughters to share lunch, a theater with plays based on the dolls, a doll hair salon, a doll hospital, and thousands of square feet of merchandise. It became a little girl must-do experience, with fans traveling from all over the country to visit. That same year, Rowland sold her company to Mattel for $700 million. She left the company a few years later.
Still On Top
As of 2011 American Girl is a Mattel subsidiary operated out Middleton, Wisconsin. As of 2011, the 10 American Girl retail stores across the country had welcomed 40 million visitors since 1998, and more than 20 million dolls had been sold. The company's website receives almost 70 million hits per year and its magazine has a circulation of almost half a million.