Editor’s Note: Brandon Lilly was nominated for the Board from the floor of the 2021 NCA Business Meeting, and was subsequently elected. In this interview he explains how he got into the costuming business and his hopes for the future.
NCA: What’s the history of the shop you and your wife, Marcia Lilly, own in Ft. Collins, Colorado?
Lilly: The Life of the Party has existed for 40 years, but even before that, the husband of the owner had a business called the Toy Dungeon. At some point they transitioned to party supplies and morphed into Life of the Party. Over the years the owner, Pat Talley, brought in Halloween items, costumes , wigs, makeup, etc. and the store became what it is now. By 2013 the rents in Old Town Ft. Collins were incredibly expensive and Pat wanted to retire, so she sold the store to Chris and Katie Corman. They had been in the haunt world for 20 + years, so they doubled down on the Halloween aspects of the store. They moved it to a new location outside of Old Town and brought in more Halloween costumes, high-end masks, etc.
NCA: How did you come to own the business?
Lilly: In 2018 Chris and Katie decided they wanted to focus their energy on their escape room business, which is upstairs from the store. So they asked on Facebook if anyone was interested in buying the store. I had been a customer since 2013, and had been thinking about the next steps for my career and my family. My wife and I are cosplayers, and we had thought about starting an online store serving that community, so when I read the Facebook post I was curious. I went in for a meeting that day and walked out thinking to myself, “I bet I could convince a bank to give us a loan for this business.” I went home and told my wife, who was four months pregnant, that I thought we should buy the business and that I was going to keep my regular full-time job. To her credit she said, “That sounds like a great idea.” We took over in July 2018.
NCA: What’s your regular job?
Lilly: In my real life I’m S enior B rand D irector & D igital M arketing S trategist for Madwire, a tech company that provides business management software solutions and marketing services for small and medium businesses.
NCA: What did your boss at Madwire say when you bought the store?
Lilly: This journey of entrepreneurship is something our leadership has been very supportive of. Being a business owner and realizing the struggles entrepreneurs have has allowed me to come back to Madwire and say, “I have a different idea, based on this struggle I’m having.” It’s allowed us to tailor our services and change the UI [user interface] of our software , Marketing 360, to help our customers with those challenges. We have more than 20,000 customers, so every little change affects a lot of people.
NCA: And has your experience at Madwire helped you in the store?
Lilly: My experience at Madwire is one of the reasons our doors are still open after the pandemic. I spent 2019 building v1 of the website, and by January 2020 I think we had 50 percent of our products online. So when we had to close the store in March, the website paid our rent. I’m still working on the site – I come home from work at 4, spend some time with our kids and family until 7:30, and then work on the business until 2 in the morning. Now we have well over 90% of our products online and available nationwide.
NCA: What changes have you made to the store?
Lilly: Since my wife and I are cosplayers, our special touch is makers’ supplies. We focus less on pre-packaged costumes and offer a lot of pieces and help people build their costumes their way . That has given us an edge over Amazon and the big box stores.
NCA: Your website shows that you do a lot of makeup and wigs.
Lilly: Outside of Halloween, those two categories are what keep us in business. We carry Ben Nye, Mehron and Moon Creations (Camden) makeup, and have great luck with all of them. We have a flourishing drag community here, and they love the Moon glitters. We carry Rockstar and Sepia (West Bay) wigs. We’re near the university, and sororities have wig parties and buy them here. A lot of cosplayers and drag queens also buy wigs. We also serve cancer patients, alopecia patients, and folks who want to experience a different gender identity.
NCA: Your website also shows that balloons are part of your business.
Lilly: Yes, that’s something (former owner) Katie started, and Marcia and I are taking to the next level. We’re now doing balloon walls, arches, that kind of thing. We’re already well known in the corporate community, and we’re trying to get in with hotels , weddings and event planners. It’s definitely becoming a bigger part of our business.
NCA: What’s the future of the store?
Lilly: My next project is launching costume rentals nationwide. Our aim is to serve the average Joe who just wants to rent a costume for a day or two and return it, and the professional Santa. We have a large stock of Halco Santa suits. There are a lot of other larger organizations that rent costumes, and they can have the theater groups and schools. We’ll take care of the little guy.
NCA: You also own a business called Goods for Geeks, which just joined as an NCA Vendor Member. Tell me about that business.
Lilly: Goods for Geeks is the North American distributor for Cosplayflex, which is a heatformed thermoplastic for cosplayers, similar to Worbla. The groundwork for this distribution was laid by (former owner) Chris. He was looking for an alternative to Worbla and learned of Cosplayflex, which is also made in Germany. He called them, and the owner said he didn’t normally ship to the U.S., but if Chris wanted to become a distributor, he would get all the orders from North America. When I purchased the company I made sure that letter of distribution was part of it. Now I’ve created a website called cosplayflex.us and am making it known that we have this product. We recently got a big order from Hobby Lobby – we had to turn the store into a nighttime manufacturing facility to prepare the order – and now I hope to bring it to costume stores. You can make anything out of it! We’re working on product photography now, and will be ready to launch to NCA members shortly.
NCA: Congratulations on these developments! Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Lilly: I’d like to note that our store is an LGBTQ safe space – that’s incredibly important to our customers, and something we find really important. We want all of our customers to feel comfortable here.