Businesses cash in on Halloween
By Dolly A. Butz Journal staff writer | Posted: Friday, October 27, 2006
Walk through a dark, dingy, cramped space occupied by chainsaw-wielding zombies, vicious clowns and blood-sucking vampires.
Transform your front yard into a haunted graveyard with weathered tombstones and stringy cobwebs. Don a green alien head with big black bulging eyes, or deck yourself out in pirate garb.
However you choose to celebrate Halloween this year, you can bet retailers will be cashing in.
Although Halloween is the sixth-largest spending holiday, the amount of money consumers spend on costumes, decorations, candy and haunted houses is steadily increasing.
A National Retail Federation survey reports that consumers will spend approximately $4.96 billion on Halloween, up from $3.29 billion a year ago. More consumers are celebrating Halloween this year than in the past. In 2005, 52.2 percent of consumers celebrated Halloween. This year nearly 63.8 percent will. According to the survey, 85.3 percent of consumers ages 18 to 24, 76.5 percent of 25-34-year-olds and 71.3 percent of 35-44-year-olds will celebrate Halloween.
"There's definitely a group of people that live for Halloween," Todd Schumansky, owner of Scare Central, said.
Schumansky owns and operates the Scare Central Costume Shop and the haunted houses Nightmare on 4th Street and The Fear Factory.
Schumansky started with an interest and a space and expanded his business over the years. He opened Nightmare on 4th Street eight years ago and added The Fear Factory three years ago. Scare Central Costume Shop started two years ago.
"This is an exceptional year," he said. "The haunted houses have been busy. Our trend in the haunted houses has been for growth in the last year."
Enter Nightmare on 4th Street and The Fear Factory at your own risk. Prepare to be submerged into darkness, startled by loud noises and followed through tight hallways by freakish ghouls, lurking creatures of the underworld and pesky trolls.
"They're both scary," Schumansky said of his haunted attractions. "Interestingly enough people always ask, 'Are they scary?' Yeah, they are."
Schumansky said he starts working on the haunted houses in the spring. He attends a Halloween convention in March to glean ideas and view the latest merchandise.
"The suppliers display all of their new props and new costumes," he said. "Once we get to that, that gives us an idea of what will be new for the year, what we need to work into, what's already existing and what we need to make space for."
Spooky decorations
Walk down the aisles of the Target Greatland store and you're bound to find black feathered wreaths, glowing bone lights and plastic tombstone lawn ornaments.
Next to Christmas, the National Retail Federation reports that Halloween is the second-biggest decorating holiday of the year. Of consumers surveyed, 67 percent said they were planning to purchase Halloween decorations. Half of those people said they were going to decorate their home or yard.
Bill Bade, executive team leader of logistics for Target Greatland, said he hasn't seen a "significant shift" in the amount of Halloween decorations available at his store.
"If there's been any kind of shift, it's been from exterior decorations to interior decorations," he said. "I carried a large assortment of interior decorations this year. My designated space and the freight I've received has been comparable to prior years."
Schumansky said a number of people in Sioux City are creating their own spooky attractions right in their front yards.
"Surprisingly, there's a lot of people that do a yard haunt," he said. "They'll set up a graveyard in their front yard and they'll have something or another that will pop up at kids when they're trick or treating. They just absolutely love it. That's another interesting aspect of Halloween, whether it be in the yard, in the garage or in the basement of their house, homestyle haunted houses are out there."
Picking the perfect costume
Dowry Costumes & More store owner Diane Widner knows Halloween only comes once a year, so she said she tries to do whatever she can to please her customers and set her store apart from the big retail chains. Widner has a seamstress on hand to give customers the perfect fit and staff who have theatrical degrees to help customers apply makeup.
"Competition is good," she said. "It keeps you on your toes and makes you try to please your customers more, so it's good for the customers."
Widner said she does about 25 percent of her business for the year in the last two weeks in October. Approximately 90 percent of her customers, she said, are adults.
"As much as we'd love for more of it to be children, parents tend to get their children's costumes when they get school supplies at Wal-Mart and K-Mart, so we kind of lose that market a little bit."
Of the Dowry's 7,000-square-foot store, 3,500 square feet is rental costumes and the other 3,500 square feet is retail costumes, hats, wigs, accessories and makeup. The Dowry offers a diverse selection of costumes ranging from vampires with piercing teeth and Gothic brides of darkness with long flowing black hair to spring fairies with shimmering gold wings and NASA astronauts with orange space suits.
What's popular and what sells, depends on the customer, Widner said. This year, she said Renaissance costumes are popular, as well as cowboys, pirates and super heroes. She said Austin Powers is even making a resurgence.
"People are looking for just fun, odd and unusual things," she said. "People like the scary stuff. Your vampires and witches are always popular. It just kind of depends on the person, the year and the situation. People come back year after year and it changes for that person each year."
On average, Widner said people spend around $50 on a Halloween costume. She said some will spend as little as $20, while others will spend several hundred dollars on a costume.
"I'm actually kind of floored by it," she said. "I just wouldn't think that some people would spend $200 on a costume. Once they get the accessories, I'm just going, 'Oh my gosh, that's crazy.'"
At Scare Central, Schumansky said adults spend an average of $50 on costumes and kids an average of $30. Because much of the kids' costume business goes to big retail chains, he said he tries to focus on areas other stores don't.
"There's a lot of room for couples' costumes and sexy costumes and plus-size and things like that," he said. "That's what we try to expand on."
Find an accompanying video in our video gallery
Transform your front yard into a haunted graveyard with weathered tombstones and stringy cobwebs. Don a green alien head with big black bulging eyes, or deck yourself out in pirate garb.
However you choose to celebrate Halloween this year, you can bet retailers will be cashing in.
Although Halloween is the sixth-largest spending holiday, the amount of money consumers spend on costumes, decorations, candy and haunted houses is steadily increasing.
A National Retail Federation survey reports that consumers will spend approximately $4.96 billion on Halloween, up from $3.29 billion a year ago. More consumers are celebrating Halloween this year than in the past. In 2005, 52.2 percent of consumers celebrated Halloween. This year nearly 63.8 percent will. According to the survey, 85.3 percent of consumers ages 18 to 24, 76.5 percent of 25-34-year-olds and 71.3 percent of 35-44-year-olds will celebrate Halloween.
"There's definitely a group of people that live for Halloween," Todd Schumansky, owner of Scare Central, said.
Schumansky owns and operates the Scare Central Costume Shop and the haunted houses Nightmare on 4th Street and The Fear Factory.
Schumansky started with an interest and a space and expanded his business over the years. He opened Nightmare on 4th Street eight years ago and added The Fear Factory three years ago. Scare Central Costume Shop started two years ago.
"This is an exceptional year," he said. "The haunted houses have been busy. Our trend in the haunted houses has been for growth in the last year."
Enter Nightmare on 4th Street and The Fear Factory at your own risk. Prepare to be submerged into darkness, startled by loud noises and followed through tight hallways by freakish ghouls, lurking creatures of the underworld and pesky trolls.
"They're both scary," Schumansky said of his haunted attractions. "Interestingly enough people always ask, 'Are they scary?' Yeah, they are."
Schumansky said he starts working on the haunted houses in the spring. He attends a Halloween convention in March to glean ideas and view the latest merchandise.
"The suppliers display all of their new props and new costumes," he said. "Once we get to that, that gives us an idea of what will be new for the year, what we need to work into, what's already existing and what we need to make space for."
Spooky decorations
Walk down the aisles of the Target Greatland store and you're bound to find black feathered wreaths, glowing bone lights and plastic tombstone lawn ornaments.
Next to Christmas, the National Retail Federation reports that Halloween is the second-biggest decorating holiday of the year. Of consumers surveyed, 67 percent said they were planning to purchase Halloween decorations. Half of those people said they were going to decorate their home or yard.
Bill Bade, executive team leader of logistics for Target Greatland, said he hasn't seen a "significant shift" in the amount of Halloween decorations available at his store.
"If there's been any kind of shift, it's been from exterior decorations to interior decorations," he said. "I carried a large assortment of interior decorations this year. My designated space and the freight I've received has been comparable to prior years."
Schumansky said a number of people in Sioux City are creating their own spooky attractions right in their front yards.
"Surprisingly, there's a lot of people that do a yard haunt," he said. "They'll set up a graveyard in their front yard and they'll have something or another that will pop up at kids when they're trick or treating. They just absolutely love it. That's another interesting aspect of Halloween, whether it be in the yard, in the garage or in the basement of their house, homestyle haunted houses are out there."
Picking the perfect costume
Dowry Costumes & More store owner Diane Widner knows Halloween only comes once a year, so she said she tries to do whatever she can to please her customers and set her store apart from the big retail chains. Widner has a seamstress on hand to give customers the perfect fit and staff who have theatrical degrees to help customers apply makeup.
"Competition is good," she said. "It keeps you on your toes and makes you try to please your customers more, so it's good for the customers."
Widner said she does about 25 percent of her business for the year in the last two weeks in October. Approximately 90 percent of her customers, she said, are adults.
"As much as we'd love for more of it to be children, parents tend to get their children's costumes when they get school supplies at Wal-Mart and K-Mart, so we kind of lose that market a little bit."
Of the Dowry's 7,000-square-foot store, 3,500 square feet is rental costumes and the other 3,500 square feet is retail costumes, hats, wigs, accessories and makeup. The Dowry offers a diverse selection of costumes ranging from vampires with piercing teeth and Gothic brides of darkness with long flowing black hair to spring fairies with shimmering gold wings and NASA astronauts with orange space suits.
What's popular and what sells, depends on the customer, Widner said. This year, she said Renaissance costumes are popular, as well as cowboys, pirates and super heroes. She said Austin Powers is even making a resurgence.
"People are looking for just fun, odd and unusual things," she said. "People like the scary stuff. Your vampires and witches are always popular. It just kind of depends on the person, the year and the situation. People come back year after year and it changes for that person each year."
On average, Widner said people spend around $50 on a Halloween costume. She said some will spend as little as $20, while others will spend several hundred dollars on a costume.
"I'm actually kind of floored by it," she said. "I just wouldn't think that some people would spend $200 on a costume. Once they get the accessories, I'm just going, 'Oh my gosh, that's crazy.'"
At Scare Central, Schumansky said adults spend an average of $50 on costumes and kids an average of $30. Because much of the kids' costume business goes to big retail chains, he said he tries to focus on areas other stores don't.
"There's a lot of room for couples' costumes and sexy costumes and plus-size and things like that," he said. "That's what we try to expand on."
Find an accompanying video in our video gallery
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