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Cashing in on aging boomers

The Sacramento Business Journal, 5/29/09

Abstract:

Two decades ago, Age Wave think-tank founders Maddy and Ken Dychtwald couldn’t get retailers or manufacturers interested in the 50-plus market.

“People wanted nothing to do with the mature market,” said Maddy Dychtwald, senior vice president of the company in San Francisco.

Now, the consumer products and services industry can’t stop thinking about the mature market, especially since a baby boomer turns 50 every 8½ seconds.

At 78 million people, boomers represent one-third of all adults in the United States.

They control half of the nation’s wealth and, at least before the recession, were spending $2 trillion on consumer products and services a year. Boomers were expected to account for about 40 percent of spending by 2015, according to a Mc-Kinsey Quarterly report in 2007.

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