The sign goes up at the new location.
By Ed Avis
Geography plays a huge role in business, whether you’re talking about a comfortable office space, a well-designed factory, or a retail location that encourages sales. The latter is what NCA Member The Costume Shoppe found when they moved their office in October, right before Halloween.
Tawnya Watts models one of her costumes
The business is 42 years old and has been owned by Tawnya Watts for the past six years. She bought it from Susan Sertain, who had owned it for 15 years.
“When I bought the shop from Susan it had already been moved a few times,” Watts says. “I grew up in Asheville (NC) and have watched tremendous change during my lifetime. The space the store previously occupied in downtown had become more expensive, and the type of person who visits downtown had changed. So Susan had moved it to a small town just north of Asheville called Woodfin.”
That was the location of The Costume Shoppe when Watts purchased it from Sertain. It occupied part of an old cotton mill.
“It was a neat old building but not good for retail space,” Watts says. “It had 18-foot ceilings and old wood floors, super cool. But also next door was warehouse space so some days customers had to dodge forklifts when they were coming in.”
Watts kept the space through COVID because the rent was reasonable, but once the pandemic lifted, she started looking for space that was more suitable for a retail costume business. She found it in early summer 2022 in a relatively new development just a mile away. She announced on Facebook that they would be in the new location in a couple of weeks. That was optimistic!
“No, it took a full two months,” she remembers. “I didn’t hire movers, I just relied on friends and family. What was I thinking!? It was bananas. We had thousands of pieces of makeup and wigs and costumes and mannequins to move. It was nuts. So we finally opened in August.”
The new store has 1,700 square feet and has a large display window. The space was used as a kick-boxing gym before, so the owners had to clean and paint it to make it ready for The Costume Shoppe. Watts built dressing rooms, put up shelves, and installed the fixtures and mannequins, many of which are vintage.
“It’s been so great. We have two ladies who are bra fitters for neighbors. They’re super sweet and helpful, and it’s fun to bounce things off them. It’s only a 5- or 10-minute drive from downtown Asheville, but it feels far because the vibe is very different. It’s been exciting and fun making the window displays, and now we have walk-in business, which we didn’t have in the previous location.”
Watts says she still gets lots of customers from Asheville.
“Asheville is an interesting area,” she reports. “Folks will take any opportunity to dress in costume. Of course Halloween is very big, but that just starts the season for us. In November and December we have a fair amount of local parades so people come in for Santa and elf costumes. And Asheville is a beer town, and people get dressed up as Santas and elves and go on beer crawls. Then New Year’s Eve is pretty big for us; there are a lot of ‘20s parties because Asheville’s boom time was the ‘20s and there is lots of art deco architecture. Then we roll into Mardi Gras, which is a pretty big scene here because there are a fair amount of transplants from New Orleans.”
The fun doesn’t end there. The Costume Shoppe rents many Easter Bunny costumes and later each spring a small town north of them holds a mermaid festival, which brings in more customers.
The bottom line is that the move has paid off. “It was absolutely the right thing,” Watts says.