Halloween Is a Howling Success Commercially
Halloween has eclipsed Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day in the Retailer’s Hall of Fame and now trails only Christmas as the largest commercial holiday in the United States.
Easily generating more than a billion dollars in business nationwide, according to one estimate, Halloween is attracting a bigger market of adult customers each year and a broader array of businesses to cater to their ghoulish needs.
Traditionally, Halloween was a time when pumpkin growers, candy makers, and costume rental stores earned as much as half their yearly revenues. And, of course, Orange County costumers are still reaping their annual revenue harvest.
But theme parks, florists, nightclubs and department stores are also discovering how much the Halloween market has grown in the last several years.
Knott’s Berry Farm, which is holding its 14th annual Halloween Haunt, expects to earn 10% of its net profit for the year from the event, said Stewart Zanville, the theme park’s spokesman.
Zanville estimates that Knott’s will lure more than 100,000 visitors--mostly teen-agers--to the park’s Ghost Town for this year’s Haunt. For $15.95 per ticket, each guest will have the pleasure of being frightened by 1,300 elaborately horrifying creatures. The park’s thrill
rides are also modified to conform with the macabre nature of the holiday.
During more mundane times of the year, the 1,000 mutants and monsters are merely Knott’s employees, augmented by 300 actors hired to slaver and frighten hapless tourists. Only visitors to the park are not costumed, Zanville said.
For the first time, this year, Knott’s has expanded its Haunt to eight nights. Five of those nights will sell out their complement of 18,000 tickets, Zanville said.
But while Knott’s caters to the teen-age market, more and more Halloween dollars are being spent by adults searching for individualized costumes or suitably ghastly decorations for parties at their homes.
A national survey commissioned by National Theme Productions, a company that generates more than 90% of its business at Halloween, found that 25% of the adults between the ages of 18 and 40 would dress in some sort of costume this Halloween.
National Theme began eight years ago in San Diego, offering retailers like Sears, J.C. Penney and Broadway a temporary “Halloween department” of 100 different costumes and 200 accouterments staffed by National Theme production employees. During September and October, the company beefs up to 6,000 employees nationally who staff centers in 850 stores, 31 of those in Orange County--the company’s second largest national market. The 31 centers will employ 350 people in Orange County this year, said Norman McKinnon, director of marketing for National Theme.
He said the volume of sales will double over last year, partly due to retailers being more aware of the adult Halloween market and partly because Halloween falls on a Friday, which means more parties.
Most costume rental stores are reporting brisk business in Ninja warriors, flappers and harem girls this year.
The owner of Costumes Galore in Orange was “pretty swamped” and too busy to talk, while Leslie Bliss, the owner of Hudson Southwest Costumes in Garden Grove, said he anticipated earning $120,000 in rentals--20% of the company’s gross receipts for the year. At Halloween, the company rents between 3,000 and 5,000 costumes, Bliss said, out of total rentals of 25,000 costumes a year.
Hudson Costumes, with a total inventory of 67,000 costumes, earns less money at Halloween than some other costume rental firms because of its size, Bliss said, which allows it to outfit actors in larger plays or theatrical productions during the remainder of the year.
But smaller firms such as Hill House Costume Shop in Costa Mesa count on Halloween for 50% of their business. Owner Bess Hill, who lives above her store, said business was not as good this year as last year because “everybody’s getting in on the bandwagon and regular costume shops are not doing as well as they did.”
Hill, who sells vintage clothing and accessories, began offering Halloween costumes eight years ago to augment income made off her trade in antique clothes. Now, she said, she stays open every day of September and October and then “opens up at least a few days every week” for the rest of the year.”
William Carden, owner of the Costume Trunk in Laguna Niguel, said that he hasn’t noticed any decrease in business as a result of more emphasis on Halloween by department stores. He expects to rent about 1,000 costumes this Halloween--25% of his revenues for the year.
“We’re definitely a fourth-quarter business,” Astrid Hickey, owner of Astrid’s Costume Attic in Buena Park said. She has hired eight employees to cope with the busy Halloween season and said that she anticipates earning 50% of her revenues between Halloween and Christmas despite a “slow-starting” Halloween season this year.
As far as seasonal business goes, Gloria Parker, a retired schoolteacher in Los Alamitos, earns nearly all her yearly revenue at Cassandra’s Rent-a-Casket during Halloween. Besides a fleet of coffins painted in suitably macabre colors, which rent for between $35 and $50, Parker offers dead flower sprays, tombstones and manikins “dressed just the way you like them.”
October has always been the best month for Goodwill Industries as well, vice president for marketing Connemara Reisinger said, accounting for almost 10% of the $5 million Goodwill will earn for the year at its 11 outlets in the county. The thrift stores will make $460,000 this month, mostly from costume sales, she said.
And, for the second year in a row, Reisinger said, two of those stores will rent as well as sell costumes. Rentals, she said, account for 2% of the thrift stores’ annual revenues and provide a continuing source of income since the same costumes can be used each year. This year Goodwill purchased accessories to accompany the costumes it sells and rents in an effort to draw even more business to their stores.
With more adults having Halloween parties, seemingly non-Halloween businesses such as Visser’s Florists and Greenhouses in Anaheim are seeing more orders for centerpieces. The company has even begun creating special arrangements in the shape of black cats and pumpkins to capitalize on the stream of orders that owner Linda Visser said will total almost 600 before week’s end.
Restaurants, bars and nightclubs such as TGI Fridays in Costa Mesa and the Park in Corona del Mar have decorated their interiors in keeping with the season. Fridays will have a costume contest for its employees on Halloween, and the Park is offering a special $75-a-couple evening with bottles of champagne awarded to the best costumed guests.
