DOROTHY LANE OPENS KIDS' SITE ON HOME PAGE

DEENA AMATO-McCOY

DAYTON, Ohio -- The children of Dorothy Lane customers will have a new meeting place this winter when the retailer launches an interactive "kids' site" through its home page in December.

Dorothy Lane Market here will provide children the opportunity to learn about food handling, to play games, even to sign up for its "Kids' Club" through an interactive site connected to its home page at www.dorothylane.com/kidsclub. The retailer plans to have the site live by Christmas.

"This is going to be an entertainment site for children that will be informative, but not boring," said Patrick Arnold, web master for Dorothy Lane.

The two-unit retailer will also use the new site to augment its "Kids' Club." The site will deliver club members information about the free products that they are eligible for each month. In addition, children will have the opportunity to enroll in the program by completing an application on-line, according to Arnold.

When accompanied by a parent and their frequent-shopper card, Kids' Club members are entitled to free products, such as fresh produce or 5-inch cakes, upon presenting their membership card at checkout. The web site will remind the members what items are available during their next store visit.

The kids' web site, a result of consumer requests, will be another valuable service to customers, said Arnold. "This will show our concern for the well-being of children, though we also wanted to have some fun with it," he said. "Instead of plain text to read, we are going to activate the site and make it fun to visit."

Arnold gave no specific projections of the number of visits he expects the new site to attract.

"This will be a site that parents can send their children to without a fear of what they will be seeing on the Internet," he said. "We want to provide a place where the children will receive a good interactive experience and will learn something."

The site will feature animated games and word puzzles that children will be able to play electronically via their personal computers, he noted.

"An example of a game could include a map of the store. The customer will need to find the items in store aisles to put an ice-cream sundae together," he explained. "In addition to games, we will also display safety guidelines for food handling, and other types of food-related information."