Friendly Jack 'O Lantern
By Ed Avis
The candy wrappers from Halloween 2021 have been swept up, the rental costumes have been returned, and guess what? NCA members’ cash registers are full!
The NCA survey this week about how costume shops did at Halloween showed unequivocally that it was good year: 71 percent of respondents said costume sales were “much better than 2020.” And that’s not all – 55 percent said sales this year were “much better than 2019,” which was the last pre-COVID Halloween, and another 23 percent said sales were “somewhat better than 2019.”
“One of the best Halloweens we have had. It was comparable to 2013 Halloween for us, which was great,” wrote Gayle Vaartjes, owner of the Kostume Room in Wyoming, Michigan, in her survey response.
Vaartjes’ response was not unusual: “Great year -- best ever, been in business 49 years!” wrote one survey respondent in Orange, California. And Larry Docktor, owner of Broadway Costumes & Theatrical Supply in Sacramento, California, wrote: “From a pure dollar perspective, it was 66% better than 2020 and 33% better than 2019!”
Inventory Troubles?
Problems with the world’s supply chain have made headlines all year, and many costume businesses have been affected. In an NCA survey the week before Halloween, about 63 percent of respondents said a lack of inventory was hurting their business (click here to read that article).
However, when the dust settled on Monday, inventory problems seem to have been less troublesome than feared. In this week’s survey, only about 9 percent of respondents said they got less than half of the inventory they were expecting, compared to about 20 percent in the pre-Halloween survey. And about 64 percent of respondents got at least 75 percent of what they ordered, about 10 percentage points better than what the pre-Halloween survey showed.
And in some cases, according to survey responses, even if inventory was not delivered, sales were solid. Gary Glandon of Stagecoach in Kearney, Nebraska, wrote that his store did not receive everything – one vendor in particular did not deliver – and their inventory was low, but Halloween was still “One of our best ever.”
Spirit, Other Pop-Ups Still Hurt
This year’s Halloween numbers look good for most NCA members, but imagine how good they would have been without Spirit Halloween and their ilk, who appear vampire-like during the season, suck a little blood, and disappear. Our survey did not ask specifically about the effect of these pop-ups, but some respondents offered their feelings anyway.
“Spirit Halloween, Walmart, Party City, the internet, and resale of costumes on facebook has taken plenty of the business in our small area. I even did a pop up shop and that really did not help. Customers started to show up to my long time business when their orders did not come in on time. I am not happy with the outcome at all after 40 years in business,” wrote one survey respondent.
Other respondents seem resigned to the existence of the temporary shops: “Overall I was pleased, just wish Spirit Halloween was not here this year..lol,” wrote Marion Bradley, NCA’s immediate past president and owner of Discount Costumes in Warner Robins, Georgia. But, ironically, Bradley says that some customers told her they searched Google for Spirit Halloween and her shop showed up (it helped that she paid for a Google ad)…so they came to her store instead!
And some shops thrived despite the close presence of the pop-ups. Harriet Berlin, owner of Artistic Costumes in Towson, Maryland, said that feared that sales would be slow this year, in part because Halloween City and Spirit both opened locations up the street from her store, but then “all hell broke loose,” she reports: “The last week we were swamped from open to close. … We decided to start selling off our rentals and that was a good move. Dressing rooms were closed due to covid and that cut down on the theft. I decided for packaged costumes no more try ons or dressing rooms.”
Amazon, of course, also was a boogeyman this year, like it has been for over a decade. One respondent wrote: “Amazon and the internet has killed Halloween for the smaller guys. How can we compete (even if we do internet sales) with examples like: fangs- we sell at $19.75 and Amazon sells the exact same company for $14 w/ free shipping. It's like that across the board for wigs, makeup, costumes, etc.”
Celebrations Returned
Halloween sales were definitely helped this year by the fact that many more people celebrated the season than last year. According to our survey, about 60 percent of respondents’ communities had trick-or-treating just like pre-COVID times, and another 31 percent had trick-or-treating with some COVID restrictions. Only about 9 percent said there was no trick-or-treating.
The same trend held for Halloween parties and parades: 57 percent said their town partied like the pre-COVID era, and 30 percent said things were a little muted, but parties and parades still happened.
The bottomline is this: Even with the problems – pop-up stores, lingering COVID restrictions in some cases, and a weak supply chain – Halloween was gang-busters this year: “We did fantastic!,” Vaartjes says.