The first products will ship this autumn according to Mattias Miksche, CEO of Stardoll at the International Toy Fair. Mattel already knows Stardoll well from having advertised its own brands on the site, like Barbie, Fashionistas and Monster High. It’s also sponsored fan clubs, created exclusive dolls and a virtual store. Miksche says Stardoll is now “very focused on entering the licensing space.”

Stardoll was launched in 2006, has more than 92 million registered (note that’s registered, not a figure for active) users globally and reaches over 15 million unique users per month. Stardoll is a virtual world where teens come together to create a “MeDoll” in their likeness, and express themselves through design, dress up and interacting with one another. Apparently it’s pretty popular in the Middle East where it’s a little harder to do that kind of thing in public.

However, it’s backers Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures are known to be impatient for an exit. So pushing for greater revenue streams could make Stardoll a more attractive proposition for a buyer.

Toys are big business, worth $22 billion annually in the US but it is one of the few major industries that hasn’t been massively disrupted by the web – yet. So Stardoll’s move makes lots of sense. Mattel would make a perfect acquirer for Stardoll so perhaps this is a date before the wedding?

OTTO owns two of the UK’s leading mail order companies, Freemans and Grattan, but wants to update its brand as affordable, trendy and cool with the move into Stardoll. Similar stores have been launched for DKNY, Miss Sixty, Alberta Ferretti and Elle on the site.

Stardoll was launched in 2005, has average age of 15+, 68 million active uniques globally and 2.9 million in German speaking markets.

Recently the publisher Random House created an interactive story project on Stardoll around the trend for vampire romance.

Stardoll has had $10m in venture capital from Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital since 2005 – a length of time which normally suggests the VCs are spinning their Blackberrys impatiently on the boardroom table.

Admittedly the site has been growing. The average age of users rising from 13 years old in 2009 to 15 years old in 2010 and year on year growth shows registered users have more than doubled from 35 to 68.7 million.

And other metrics are up, with time spent on the site increasing from 13.3 to 17.05 minutes and pageviews are up 40% from 6.2m to 8.7m.

Stardoll also says its ad business is working well in the key markets of the U.S, Europe and Canada with global brands using it such as Unilever, P&G, Disney, Warner, Miss Sixty, Sony, Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Penguin Publishing.

Unfortunately, with a Series B invested and no IPO market in site where is Stardoll’s potential exit? Way out of sight it would appear.

Which is why is makes sense to try and push its audience upwards to ages where its users are starting to be old enough to have their own credit cards, as we can see by this much slicker, older site design which will work with older teens, especially in emerging markets.

Now calling itself Stardoll.com, the site took $4 million in Series A funding from Index Ventures in February 2006, and $6 million in a B Series round lead by none other than Sequoia in June the same year.

It’s a rags to riches success story that makes Stardoll worth taking a look at, and the space is seeing hyper growth. See our writeup of Zwinky last week.

Stardoll is all about dressing up dolls online.

Stardoll lets users create their own doll or choose from a large collection of celebrity dolls which can then be dressed up in virtual fashions. Every celebrity doll has a wardrobe full of unique clothes and outfits, with new celebrity dolls and outfits released weekly.

Each user is given a page from where they can share the dolls they have created, accompanied with a guest book, diary (blog), friend connections and album.

Most users are girls between the age of 10 to 17 and online safety immediately becomes a consideration. Stardoll adds a layer of anonymity to all accounts. Users can never reveal personal information such as their real name or city of origin on their pages.

Joining the site for the first time, you start with 25 star dollars that can be used to buy accessories for each virtual doll. Accessories range from 1 – 35 star dollars with users able to buy additional star dollars at the rate of 10 star dollars to $1.

They currently sell between 60,000 to 180,000 items per day.

In the background is a team that has grown to 40 people based in Stockholm, with a Los Angeles office on its way. Matt Palmer, former EVP of Marketing for Disney’s Kids Network has been hired to lead the North American push.

Stardoll has 7,144,735 members and is adding 20,000 new members a day, with 5.5 million unique visitors per month.

With its European heritage, languages supported include French, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian and Polish, with a dedicated German .de version recently being launched. 30% of traffic comes from the United States vs. 50-52% from the European Union.

As a destination this won’t appeal to all readers, men in particular working in tech fields, however the numbers speak volumes for their growing success amongst their target demographic. With Sequoia amongst its investors it doesn’t take rocket science to work out that the site looks like a winner.

There’s a positive message as well.

Chasing funding and trying to be the next best thing in Web 2.0 can be hard at times, and even a little depressing. Stardoll shows us that from little things, big things can grow.