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When I was 13 in the late 2000s, finally old enough to be dropped off at our local mall in Delaware, US, there was only one place I wanted to shop: Limited Too. The store, founded in 1987, was a younger offshoot of adult clothing brand The Limited, and was a tween fashion destination filled with logo tees, floral sundresses, plaid skirts, denim vests and plenty of sparking accessories. Limited Too was among many stores of the time that catered to the in-between age – Wet Seal, Delia's, The Body Shop, Lush, Charlotte Russe – where young people were playing with ideas of who they could become. But by 2008, Limited Too's retail locations had vanished, many having merged with the tween store Justice, which, as of 2020, also shuttered all physical locations. Today's tweens have few retail spaces to frequent, not because their generation isn't interested in shopping – quite the opposite. Gen Alpha, born between 2010 and 2024, is more brand-aware than ever, but they have few dedicated spaces or brands targeting their specific needs. Instead, Gen Alpha want to enter directly into the brands of adulthood, preferring to shop where their millennial parents shop: Lululemon, Sephora, Walmart, Target. Mature brands are ready to welcome these young shoppers – and for good reason. As an estimated 2.5m Gen Alphas are born weekly, the demographic's economic footprint is expected to reach $5.46tn (£4.32tn) by 2029 – almost as much as the spending power of millennials and Gen Z combined. By setting their sights on the youngest consumers, adult brands can secure the loyalty of the next generation by simply expanding the offerings they already have. The end of the tween branding space The concept of a "tween" is largely a North American term, and wouldn't exist were it not for advertising. Short for "tweenager", one of the word's first appearances was in 1964 as a size designation in a New York Times article about shopping. By the late 1980s, the term had taken firm hold, with tween shopping habits for things like Polaroid cameras and video games making frequent headlines. "No, not teen-ager. Tween-ager," a 1988 USA Weekend article reads, per the Oxford English Dictionary. "She's that nine-year-old suddenly dressing to the nines. He's that 10-year-old buying Benetton instead of baseball cards. They hang out at the local tween mecca – the shopping mall." Other languages have their own designations, such as "teini" in Finland; and the Arabic "sin el morahqa", which translates to "age of getting closer". Tween shopping has similarly gained an international foothold. There was Tammy Girl, a haven for UK tweens in the '90s that shut its doors in 2005, and Pull&Bear, a streetwear-casual store for young people founded in Spain in 1991. It's still going strong. American tween brands like Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister have also found success abroad, with stores in Asia, Europe and South America.