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October 28, 2010Behind every holiday is a business.
For Halloween, that business is the sale of haunting décor, frightening – or revealing – costumes and the sweet sugar drug.
On Martin Luther King Boulevard in Houma, Spirit Halloween and Halloween Bootique operate three months a year and quench the consumers’ demands so well that it sustains the companies for the remaining nine months.
“We are always busy,” said Lisa Fritze, manager of Spirit Halloween. “We have exceeded sales every day that we’ve been here. We do a whole year’s worth of business in two months. It’s very, very profitable.”
Halloween Bootique shift manager Donna Verret echoed Fritze’s sentiments, and said since the store opened independently from Coach House Gifts in Southdown Mall last year, profits have soared.
“It is very profitable,” Verret said. “They have tripled their sales since we’ve moved here from the mall.”
Nationwide, the average consumer will spend $66 on Halloween and the total sales are expected to approach $6 billion, according to the National Retail Federation.
Fritze, a former nurse and transplant from Iowa, is new to the holiday business. She decided to dabble in costume and decoration retail while taking a one-year break from nursing and said she was surprised to find out the venture was so prosperous.
“Personally, as a nurse and not working in this field, yes I was surprised,” Fritze said. “But costumes and everything are very popular down here anyway because people use them, you know, during Mardi Gras. People will have three or four parties, so they buy three or four different costumes. Where I had moved here from, that didn’t happen.”
When the calendar rolled to October, the stores report, decoration items, such as talking jack-o-lanterns and eerie welcome signs, made up the bulk of sales. That transitioned, however, as Oct. 31 drew nearer.
“Up until this point, people have been purchasing a lot of childrens’ stuff,” Fritze said. “Starting this week, we’re doing a lot of the adults.
“We will, by Saturday, we will triple our business. From what I’ve done in business from Day One until Oct. 22, I will do that much from the 23rd to the 31st, so its going to be amazing how busy we’ll be.”
The hot-selling garb this year, according to Fritze and Verret, are the “sexy women” costumes.
“The sexy women costumes are huge, huge sellers, amazingly huge sellers,” Fritze said.
“We actually sell more in adult women’s than anything,” Verret said. “Even more than children’s.”
Of course, some will purchase outfits with a more traditional look.
“I think I am going to the vampire time where the girls wore the long dresses and the corsets and stuff like that. I think I’m going with that,” said shopper Bethanie Cato, who added that she will be throwing a Halloween party.
As far as children are concerned, each year pop culture lends a trendy idea, and with the 3rd edition of Toy Story debuting on the big screen in June, 2010 has its winner.
“The Toy Story costumes go fast, and Dorothy is one of the popular ones in the kids,” said Brittney Verret, who works the cash register among various other tasks at Halloween Bootique.
Business is booming for the MLK boutiques, but the staff remains wary of prospective customers looking to trick the stores and secure a treat of their own. Whether it is the mysterious atmosphere surrounding the holiday, the large stores with small, and young staffs or the allure of making some cash on the Black Market, theft has been an issue at both stores.
“There is a lot of theft,” Fritze said. “Mostly costumes, that we can tell, which surprised me. I never imagined that happened.
Some people that have been caught, that had stolen costumes and were selling them on the street for like $20, so if they have a $70 costume, they are able to make $20 off it.”
Donna Verret agreed her staff remains aware of potential theft on a daily basis.
“Theft is a real big problem here,” she said. “We just kind of keep on them. You know who is going to shoplift. You’ve just got to keep following them and see if they’re going to try to take it in front of you or not.”
Both Spirit Halloween and Halloween Bootique will store all unsold inventory until next fall, but Fritze said her store will remain open for two weeks in November and sell the remaining costumes at half price.
