Anna Kraynova
Trick or trunk. Sad upset baby in unicorn costume celebrating Ha
By Ed Avis
Halloween 2020 is finally over. It has to have been one of the most angst-riddled holidays in the history of the costume industry. At first everyone in the industry was all excited that Halloween was falling on a full-moon Saturday…then COVID blasted the world and all that excitement turned to fear.
As we’ve written previously (click here to read the article about Halloween), NCA Buyer Members reported some sad numbers for Halloween. Those who said they used some elements of the Help Halloween Happen campaign reported slightly better results, but overall it was a tough Halloween for our members.
On the other hand, the manufacturers of costumes reported very different results. I haven’t seen definitive numbers, but anecdotally many said they had a solid year. There were no blockbuster movies to encourage the sales of super hero or other character costumes, but people were still buying costumes to dress up at home, evidently. And companies making décor hit a home run this year – everyone wanted to decorate. Candy makers had similar results – the National Confectioners Association said sales were up 13 percent through September 6. Clearly, being locked up at home hasn’t diminished anyone’s capacity for eating sweets!
So why did the manufacturers show such positive results when most of our Buyer Members did not? My theory is that our Buyer Members didn’t share in the manufacturers’ success because so much Halloween-related commerce moved online this year. People were afraid to go shopping because of COVID, but they still wanted costumes, so they bought from the web. That’s fine and dandy for the manufacturers, but bad news for shop owners.
What can we do to help the retailers now? I see two paths. First, as an association, the NCA needs to help our members improve their online sales. We have held webinars over the past year on this topic, but we need to do more, not only in how to set up an e-commerce shop, but also how to promote it via social media. But second, and more important, we need to continue helping our members persuade their communities to shop local.
The shop local concept is widely appreciated these days, but COVID delivered a painful blow to the movement. Once COVID’s grip on retail is broken – hopefully the vaccine will accomplish that – we need to rebuild the belief that shopping in local stores is important. We’ll have to do that by reminding shoppers how much life a vibrant retail scene brings to a community. Remember when you could walk downtown and visit a dozen stores? That’s way more enjoyable than browsing a dozen e-commerce websites. And every purchase made locally supports local workers and business owners, as well as the overall vibrancy of a community.
How can we do that? It will require efforts on the national and local scale. The NCA can help on the local scale by providing information and resources to our members, such as information about the 3/50 Project. And we should help members tap the power of innovation and start selling products and services that big box stores and internet retailers don’t sell. But I hope the large associations in the industry – whose members are primarily manufacturers – will also join this fight. Their members might have done well this Halloween with online sales, but overall everyone will do better if bricks-and-mortar stores remain vital. The more potential sales outlets a manufacturer has, the better the sales.
Next Halloween is on a Sunday. That’s not as good as a Saturday, but just imagine having two nights of Halloween parties leading up to the actual holiday. That could be a lot of costumes sold and rented. Let’s hope the majority of them are sold and rented by bricks-and-mortar stores.
Ed Avis is the executive director of the NCA. Reach him at executivedirector@costumers.org
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