The Olsen Juggernaut

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, 14, are on the ground floor of Fred Segal on Melrose Avenue in their hometown, Los Angeles. They have just finished trying on clothes and are in the process of reviewing their potential purchases with Jill Zimmerman, 31, their friend, former on-set nanny and currently an executive in their company, Dualstar Entertainment Group. They are fraternal twins, not identical, but facially similar enough that if you see them side by side -- at, say, a table read for ''So Little Time,'' their coming sitcom, which makes its debut on June 2 on the Fox Family Channel -- you might have more than a little trouble telling them apart. Sitting still and silent, their eyes downcast, concentrating on their scripts, they have the slightly spooky, supernatural and solemn beauty of a Diane Arbus photograph. Their individual allure is not so much doubled by their twinship as amplified, as if they were drawing on some different light source than anyone else in the room.

But that could just be because they are stars. Various shows featuring the Olsens already run more than 30 times a week. With the addition of seven broadcasts a week of ''So Little Time,'' not to mention the animated show -- Mary-Kate and Ashley in Action'' -- that is in production for ABC's Saturday-morning lineup next fall, they will be on the air probably in more forms, definitely at more stages of life and possibly more often than any other performer in the medium outside of music video.

They have always worked together. And to their fans, they are a unit, differentiated mostly by the mild variations in character according to which they are marketed -- Mary-Kate is the sporty Olsen and Ashley is the girly Olsen. This is a simplified version of reality. It's hard to summarize anyone's personality with a few adjectives, but in general, Mary-Kate is funkier, more casual and more outgoing, and Ashley is more put-together, more poised and more reserved. They are both courteous, bright and friendly -- as easy and as difficult to know as any kid who is fundamentally a good kid. And they are plenty pretty enough even aside from the twin association, with the sweet, unusual coloring that sometimes occurs in blue-eyed blondes of Nordic descent who tan rather than burn, and that makes you think of wildflowers and the beach.

But really, anyone who had had any exposure to them at all and who happened to be sitting on the couch between the cubicles where they were trying on clothes a few moments earlier, when Jill Zimmerman announced, ''I want to be on the road in 20 minutes, you guys -- you have homework,'' would have been able to make a good guess at who was who just on the basis of their feet, which were the only parts of them that the dressing-room doors left showing: bare feet, Vamp toenail polish -- Mary-Kate; white anklets -- Ashley.

Ashley, who has selected more things than Mary-Kate -- a green and brown zip-up top by Urchin, a pair of Katayone pants and, at the last minute, two white-ribbed tanks, which are firmly reduced to one by Jill Zimmerman -- shows Zimmerman a pair of Earl Jeans. ''These are so cute,'' she says, lovingly running a hand over them. ''But you don't have to get them here,'' Zimmerman whispers. ''You can get them for $30 at the outlet.''

This is a funny little scene, partly because it is typical of the shopping impulses of teenage girls everywhere and of the moderating influence of the adults who care for them. But also because products bearing the names ''Mary-Kate and Ashley'' are, in one form or another, on track to generate in the neighborhood of $500 million in retail sales in 2001 and, if the trend holds, almost $800 million in 2002.

Because Mary-Kate and Ashley are a brand. And not just any brand. For girls between the ages of 4 and 14 they are the brand. Despite the fact that assuming you are not a girl between the ages of 4 and 14 or her parent you may have only the vaguest idea of who Mary-Kate and Ashley even are, they are a brand doing bang-up business with companies including Wal-Mart, Mattel, HarperEntertainment, News Corp, AOL Time Warner and Disney. Their Mattel dolls are outselling all others in the comparable fashion-doll category, except for Barbie. Two of their direct-to-video movies were Nos. 1 and 3 on Billboard's children's video charts for the year 2000.

Their various book series have close to 30 million copies in print. This is not to mention the Mary-Kate and Ashley fashion line, the Mary-Kate and Ashley video games, the Mary-Kate and Ashley pocket planners, the Mary-Kate and Ashley magazine, which appeared on newsstands in March, or the Mary-Kate and Ashley CD's.

In short, they can afford as many pairs of Earl Jeans as they want.

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are a phenomenon that until very recently would have been impossible: they are precision superstars, entertainers who operate for the most part entirely outside the Hollywood machine and who, owing to the universality of cable television and the VCR, can simultaneously be the biggest thing going to the millions who make up their demographic and all but unknown outside of it. Cast as a tag team at the age of 9 months as the single character of Michelle on the sitcom ''Full House,'' they were practically born on television, and since ''Full House'' ran for eight seasons, they practically grew up on it. They are capable sitcom performers and diligent professionals, and these are both attributes made somewhat more impressive by their youth. But even the people who manage them agree that talent is not the basis of Mary-Kate and Ashley's enormous appeal -- that their talents are modest, and that even if they were stellar, it would not account for their near-total reach when it comes to the ''tween'' girl consumer.

None of the explanations usually offered -- that they are cute, aspirational, good role models -- really could account for it. Girls just like them. You can put their name on almost anything, and as long as you get it in stores and rack it properly it sells, without regard to quality and sometimes in direct opposition to retail trends. The premiere issue of Mary-Kate and Ashley Magazine is an editorially shoddy product that made its debut during a media recession. The cover, a black-and-white photograph showing the barely recognizable Olsens in the middle distance walking into the surf, while beautiful, is not on the face of it either child- or user-friendly and should have been a disaster on the newsstand. And at $6, the magazine costs twice what most grownups, let alone 10-year-olds, are believed to be willing to pay for a single issue. But it achieved almost 70 percent sell-through on the stands, at a time when the industry-wide average is less than 35 percent.

Mary-Kate and Ashley's ability to meet pretty much whatever retail goals Dualstar sets for them has been virtually unfailing since they hooked up with Robert Thorne when they were 4 1/2; he became their manager and began to make videos and CD's that capitalized on their popularity as Mary-Kate and Ashley qua Mary-Kate and Ashley. It wouldn't be much of an overstatement to say that through judicious expansion, the pace of which was guided as much by respect for the fact that his clients are children as it was by canny assessments of the marketplace, Thorne, now C.E.O. of Dualstar, has built a half-billion-dollar-plus-per-year brand out of almost nothing. Still, this is a representation (flattering to him, but bad for the brand) that he dismisses. ''Even though they're 14 years old, I work for them,'' he says. ''It started as a fiction, to be candid, that it was Mary-Kate and Ashley's deal, this brand, this whole thing. They were involved more like: 'Is this O.K.?' 'Sure.' Now they say we created a monster, but I don't think so. I think we created two professional executives.''

There is some P.T. Barnum to this but also some truth. Mary-Kate and Ashley say when they want to or do not want to work. Because they like to travel, their movies tend to be written to take place at least in part on locations to which they want to travel -- Paris, London, Australia -- much the way the plot line of ''Help!'' was influenced by the Beatles' wish to go skiing or to the Bahamas. They give notes on scripts and casting. They pay attention in an editorial meeting, ask questions, at age level, and are encouraged to do so.

They have absolute, even despotic, yes-or-no power on the designs for the fashion line, as well as creative input that goes quite a bit further than that. They have very decided and, as a matter of fact, superlative taste in clothing. They got Wal-Mart to go an inch below the bellybutton for low-rise trousers and have what is a positively avant-garde palette and fit for the preteen market in their fall line. A transcript of them going over swatches for swim wear with Judy Swartz, a designer, would go something like: ''No. No. No. No. No. No. Oh, this is so cute! I love this! No.''

Whoever is ultimately responsible, however, is doing a good job. The Wal-Mart line, which probably accounts for at least one-third of their brand's projected gross annual revenues, was introduced in January 2001 and so far includes sportswear, swimwear, sleepwear, eyewear, footwear, bags, accessories and jewelry. For the back-to-school season, they will add bedding, bath, intimates and workout wear. For spring 2002, they will roll out cosmetics. Toddlers and juniors lines are in the works.

At Fox Family Channel -- where a combination of reruns of their post-Full House'' series for ABC, ''Two of a Kind,'' and the Dualstar-produced ''Mary-Kate and Ashley's Adventures'' are already on more than 20 times a week -- hopes for ''So Little Time'' are high. Mary-Kate and Ashley will play the twin daughters of separated parents, struggling, in an unthreatening sitcom way, to deal with their parents' different lifestyles -- their father is a laid-back bohemian and their mother is a hard-charging businesswoman -- as well as the challenges of adolescence.

''They're on more than any other show on the entire network, daytime or prime time,'' says Joel Andryc, head of children's programming, ''and consistently, wherever we put their shows, they do very good numbers. We're positioning our network as sort of a steppingstone between Nickelodeon and MTV. This new series is going to be a major initiative for us. We're kind of where Comedy Central was a couple of years ago, when suddenly 'South Park' came onto their network and everybody wanted Comedy Central. So, like 'The Sopranos' for HBO or 'Rugrats' for Nickelodeon -- that's what I'm hoping this show will be.''

Being a brand, the equities of which are reliable enough that divisions of enormous multinational corporations look to them when seeking to establish a leading strength, is not a huge part of the day-to-day reality of Mary-Kate and Ashley. And except that they have been working since preconsciousness and are so adored and emulated by the average American little girl that when they wore bandannas in one of their direct-to-video movies, it sparked a run on bandannas across the country (this was one of the proximate causes for the Wal-Mart line), they are basically normal kids, albeit very busy normal kids.

Their parents are divorced and share custody, but Mary-Kate and Ashley spend more time with their father, Dave, along with their older brother, Trent, 17, their younger sister, Lizzie, 12, their two half-siblings, Taylor, 4, and Jake, 3, and their stepmother, McKenzie. (Their mother, Jarnette, does not speak to the press or participate in Mary-Kate and Ashley's lives as public figures.) Socially speaking, they are not part of an entertainment in crowd and have the same relationship to, say, Drew Barrymore or Brad Pitt that the girls who spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on them do, which is to say: none.

According to Dave Olsen, Mary-Kate and Ashley's fame has a minimal impact on family life because, for one thing, it's all anyone has ever known. They go to a small private school, where they have the usual burdens of the private-school student -- a dress code, having to read ''Beowulf'' for freshman English -- and the usual recreational activities of the well-off teenage girl. Mary-Kate rides horses. Ashley takes dance. Both are more interested in shopping, hanging out and instant-messaging with their friends than they are in their careers or their investment portfolios -- although they are clearly enormously wealthy. (Dualstar, of which they own a majority, retains the rights to almost everything Mary-Kate and Ashley do and has corporate assets in excess of $100million; their personal fortunes, set aside in trusts, are unknowable other than, according to Thorne, being ''far in excess of what the law requires'' -- 15 percent of gross -- because their contracts are often filed under seal for security purposes.)

Even when they are at work, the atmosphere around Mary-Kate and Ashley is more familial than anything else. Dave Olsen, a former mortgage banker who now develops commercial real estate, is involved in the financial oversight of his daughters' affairs as well as the decision-making process generally; both Jill Zimmerman and Robert Thorne have relationships with their 14-year-old bosses that are as much parental as professional. They always have each other, of course, and there is usually another family member around as well.

''The other kids may feel that the girls get to travel a little more,'' says Dave Olsen. ''But on the other side, sometimes the girls miss being away from their friends for a month. You have the same . . . they're not jealousies, but the same frictions that you just have growing up with siblings. Like the girls think for sure Lizzie gets treated better than anybody else: 'She gets to go here and do this and you're letting her have AOL before we had it.' Like that.''

It's the day before Valentine's Day, and Mary-Kate is sitting on a couch in Robert Thorne's office on the Universal lot, where ''So Little Time'' is in preproduction, with her dad and Thorne, although the latter is working behind a desk and paying only intermittent attention to the conversation. Asked if she has a Valentine, she says: ''Nope. My sister. But not me. Not yet. Hopefully.''

''Mary-Kate,'' Dave Olsen says, in tones of mock reproval.

''Daddy,'' Mary-Kate says.

''Maybe you'll be reading lines with Jesse,'' Thorne says. (This is teasing. Jesse plays a character who's hung up on Mary-Kate's character on the new series.)

''No. I want to go out on Valentine's Day.''

''With a friend,'' Dave Olsen says. ''Or you can have a couple girlfriends over, but you guys have school the next day, and Ashley's got to be home by -- ''

''We didn't stage this, by the way,'' Thorne remarks.

''Ashley has a date tomorrow,'' Dave Olsen continues. ''Some fellow from the basketball team. And he seems like a nice guy. He seems like enough of a nerd -- ''

''A NERD??'' erupts Mary-Kate. ''Go tell that to Ashley. I'm going to tell her.''

''I'm not really saying that he's a nerd,'' Dave Olsen says. ''But he seems conservative enough and - ''

Ashley enters, is asked about her plans for Valentine's Day, replies that she is going out with ''a guy'' and doesn't know what time she'll be home (9:30, it is later established).

''A guy,'' Dave Olsen says. ''He's only like 6-3.''

''How do you know?'' Ashley says.

''I met him, Ashley, remember? When we went to pick up his boutonniere for the winter formal, he was there picking up her corsage. So I got to meet him. And Ashley's face went as red as you can imagine.''

''And he was even more embarrassed,'' adds Ashley, with some evident hope of turning the conversation, which does turn, to school.

Next month, Mary-Kate and Ashley -- who were born, appropriately, under the sign of Gemini -- will be 15 years old. In real life, at least. In the many media they dominate, they will continue to be available in forms that appeal to everyone from post-toddlers to adolescents. For the youngest part of their audience, there will be reruns of ''Full House'' and, this fall, the animated series. For fans their own age, there will be ''So Little Time.'' For those in between, there will be ''Two of a Kind.'' Ideally, for everybody there will be the magazine and the Wal-Mart line, which, as abstractions of the brand that are designed to continue to offer whatever intangible gift Mary-Kate and Ashley represent to the consumer, can theoretically rule the 4-to-14-year-old demographic forever, leaving the actual Mary-Kate and Ashley free to pursue the business of growing up without brand attrition. ''I can't predict what the consumer is going to do,'' says Michael Stone, who, through his company, The Beanstalk Group, handles the licensing for Mary-Kate and Ashley's Wal-Mart products. ''I can only look back and see that the brand has always continued to build and grow. If it was a graph, it would be a line that goes straight up.''

And if it does not, if Mary-Kate and Ashley, who have never lived a day of their conscious lives in which they were not adored by millions, lose that adoration? Asked this question, Robert Thorne says: ''That day won't come unless they want it to. You're talking to a guy who's sure of something because it just never changes. They won't rob convenience stores, they'll buy them. They're never going to be in a motor home going, 'What have my parents done with my money, and where's my fame, and why doesn't anybody recognize me anymore?' They're just too into this. If they change their minds tomorrow, fine. But I just think there's too much momentum. And they're almost a monopoly. It would be hard to knock them off the perch.''

And there's some P.T. Barnum to that, too. But there's probably more truth. As Audrey D'Iremo, 14, a Mary-Kate and Ashley fan who was standing outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza at the time of their appearance on ''The Today Show'' in March put it: ''They're our age. And they grow with us. So we're never going to be too old for them.''