Girls Click-and-Drag to Outfit Celebrities on Doll Sites, and Investors Take Notice
Hannah Reichert, an 11-year-old in North Bergen, N.J., likes dressing up dolls, but the worlds of Barbie and Bratz aren't so interesting to her. Instead, she visits Cartoon Doll Emporium, a Web site she discovered while searching for dolls.
"It's just cool," she said of the site, where she can drag and drop shirts, dresses, shoes and jewelry onto drawings of celebrities and cartoon characters, as well as chat with friends in online forums. She doesn't play with actual dolls, but CDE, as she and other users call it, is a regular stop between dinner and bedtime. "I go on there every day," she said.
CDE is one of a handful of virtual doll sites, including Stardoll and The Doll Palace, that have seen traffic surge. The straightforward sites, which evoke traditional paper dolls, have managed to capture an often ignored segment of the online audience: young girls. And investors are taking note: Stardoll, launched by a Finnish doll enthusiast and her son, has received more than $10 million in venture funding from Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures. Meanwhile, the makers of Barbie and Bratz dolls are moving to add new online dress-up offerings.
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