Guilt Trip
Owe Dad a phone call--or Mom a home-cooked meal with your kids?
Relax, you can make up for it by ordering something from Mature Mart.

Last Christmas, Ann Sickeler, 78, who winters in Vero Beach, Fla., looked into a huge gift basket from her daughter. Instead of fruit and flowers, she found oversize playing cards, a zipper pull, a bracelet fastener, a swivel car seat and other items from Mature Mart, an Atlanta company that specializes in gewgaws for elderly people. "I though, 'What in the world?' when I started pulling these things out of the basket. Some are handy, but I really didn't need them."

No. And chances are, she wouldn't really need the cane that converts into a seat or the jar opener set or the reusable hand warmer--or any of the more than 300 items offered by Mature Mart via catalog or Web site (www.maturemart.com). But it might make a whole lot of younger men and women feel better about themselves if they sent, say, a $7 potato peeler and a $3 pill organizer to an elderly parent who's living alone--perhaps, even, in another city.

America is certainly getting longer in the dentures, headed for demographics more like those of Japan or Germany, whose populations are looking more like the state of Florida's. But it's the 80 million people aged 35 to 54 that caught the attention of J. Alexis Abramson, Mature Mart's founder and chief executive. In 1996, after graduating with a master's degree in gerontology from West Georgia College at age 28, Abramson founded Mature Mart with $50,000 from family and friends. By the end of that year Mature Mart had sales of $100,000, jumping to $3 million in 1998. This year she expects sales of $5 million.

Who's buying? Abramson says that more than half her customers are children or caregivers: "A busy baby boomer executive calls us and says, 'Anything my mother needs--send it.' They're wiling to pay any price."

Any price can be pretty steep. Consider the Mature Mart thick-gripped can opener, which sells for $18. After adding UPS ground delivery (the cheapest delivery option), it comes to $23. That's four times what you would pay for the device at Wal-Mart.

"What you have is the baby boomer feeling guilty for being 3,000 miles away from their parent," says Dr. Christopher Hayes, director of gerontology at Long Island University in Southampton, NY.

Abramson has never spent a nickel on advertising or mailing lists. Instead, she has penned editorials in small-town newspapers, been the subject of dozens of positive articles and hired a publicist. But it was her 15 to 20 appearances on NBC's Today Show that have really pumped up Mature Mart's ledgers. "Every time I appear with a few products, we get at least a 50% spike in sales for the items featured," Abramson says.

In addition to her catalog sales, Abramson has lined up 800 retail outlets--mall kiosks, pharmacy displays and grocery store point-of-purchase sites--which now account for 40% of sales. The company has consulted for various businesses, including SouthTrust Bank and restaurant chain Subway. She advised Subway to provide magnifiers, special chairs, raised toilet seats and the like--all of which, by no coincidence, can be purchased from Mature Mart.

Abramson has found one more clever way to exploit the market she serves. Ten of her telephone clerks are people old enough to use Medicare. She doesn't have to provide health insurance or a pension.