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Halloween creeps up

No bones about it: Halloween is now a seasonal retail extravaganza. Sweets don’t cut it anymore. You need props.

 

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published August 31, 2006

[Times photo: Willie J. Allen Jr.]

With a swami in a Spirit Ball watching, Sarah Paul, 46, organizes the Fun Stuff Halloween Superstore. Paul and her husband, Rick, 47, have sold Halloween masks, costumes and bloody arms in St. Petersburg for 20 years. Does it bother you to see Halloween items on the shelves so soon? Or, what is your favorite store? Tell us at itsyourtimes.com

Labor Day weekend is here. Have you started your Halloween shopping yet?

Trick or treat may be two months away, but retailers have already set out their wares for what’s become the second-biggest decorating holiday season of the year behind Christmas.

Be advised. Some new items are clever, like carve-able foam pumpkins at Jo-Ann’s that don’t collapse in a muddled mess after a week. Some are cute, like a cow costume for dogs at PetSmart.

But themes are getting more morose and macabre than ever with the going rate for fake blood-spattered body parts at $5.99. Are you ready for a plug-in skeleton at Walgreens with blinking red eyes that dances to La Vida Loca?

“We live for Halloween,’’ said Sarah Paul who hopes over two months to generate about $200,000 in sales at the Fun Stuff Halloween Superstore she owns with her husband Rick in St. Petersburg.

Look around. Walgreens this week replaced all those summer beach coolers and chairs with two aisles of Halloween decorations and candy. TJ Maxx has six fixtures full of hobgobblin-style gift and party items including a life-size mummy for $79.99. The entrance to Jo-Ann Superstores is a sea of orange, yellow and brown Halloween stuff down to the candy shaped like severed body parts and pumpkin and ghost “peeps.”

Target, CVS and Wal-Mart aim to complete their switch next week.

Believe it or not, Halloween goods are appearing no earlier than usual.

“Actually, we moved our start back two weeks this year, so we didn’t have to set up the front of the store a second time after Labor Day,’’ said Debra Eriksen , a Jo-Ann store manager.

The big underlying change, however, is Americans over several years have transformed Halloween from an event that consumed a day or two to one that stretches on for a month thanks to porch and yard displays. Surveys showed 47 percent of consumers decorated their home or yard last year and 95 percent bought candy.

All the big Florida theme parks help keep up the drumbeat by heavily advertising their special Halloween scare-fest nights that have expanded to run through all of October. Party stores say prop sales are brisk, supplying companies that stage Halloween events as well as hotel catering departments.

Nationally, retailers sold an estimated $3.3-billion in Halloween paraphernalia in 2005. That’s still below a peak of $4-billion in 2001. But it’s enough to be the year’s seventh biggest holiday for retail sales. It’s only a sliver of the $439-billion Christmas holidays and a fraction of the $13.8-billion for second-place Mother’s Day in 2006.

“Even though its discretionary spending that might get diverted by gas prices, we’re expecting to see a boost this season,’’ said Scott Krugman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation.

“Halloween has become a truly seasonal event that anchors autumn promotions for many retailers. These days it’s the works: candy, gifts, costumes, party supplies, decorations.’’

Indeed, the Pauls have seen yard decorations grow from 10 percent of their annual sales to 25 percent in three years.

Display props have gotten more sophisticated than orange plastic bags of leaves.

Blow-up pumpkins this year include Disney theme characters dressed as pirates. Huge puppets that hang from trees come in the form of gauze ghosts, headless ghouls and giant spiders. Candy corn comes in 20-foot garlands for hanging or strings of twinkle lights.

Fiberglass graveyard headstones can be shrouded by $50 to $100 ground fog machines. Some $30 gallon jugs of “fog juice’’ at Party City, however, offered no ingredient label except a warning to “call a poison center if swallowed.’’
Retailers expect brisk sales of such props as black long stem roses and foot-tall rats and bugs.

Retailers deploy seasonal displays early to get shoppers in the mood for holiday spending as they build inventory. It’s a tactic retail marketers call “Christmas creep.’’

Malls and retailers, for instance, don’t plug in the Christmas decorations until the day after Halloween.

But full-fledged Christmas trim-a-tree departments will be up and running in most stores by the second week in September.

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.

[Last modified August 31, 2006, 21:39:01]