Halloween is big business.
Spirit Halloween, for example, has grown into such an annual retail phenomenon that it recently received the ultimate pop culture high-five: a sketch on “Saturday Night Live.”
“We don’t see a dead end town. We don’t see an abandoned Kmart. We see a spirit, a Spirit Halloween,” the fake SNL ad states.
While the sketch may be tongue-in-cheek, it hits on a larger truth regarding the temporary real estate presence of the holiday company, which dubs itself the “nation’s largest Halloween retailer.” This year, Spirit Halloween opened a record 1,525 locations and started hiring for those stores in June. The company even partnered with Uber to deliver costumes to last-minute shoppers.
Yet, the fall holiday is not relegated to seasonal retailers. Target, Walmart, Amazon, home improvement stores and others are taking advantage of a time when consumers are ready to celebrate — and spend money.
Halloween has “proven to be a resilient investment for both retailers and consumers, even amid economic uncertainty,” according to the Advantage Outlook survey of Halloween shoppers and insights from Advantage Unified Commerce.
A big reason why Halloween has gained so much enthusiasm from both retailers and shoppers alike may simply come down to this: it’s fun.
“This time of the year you can go straight from having fall decorations out into your holiday decorations. It’s just something that people really enjoy,” said Katie Thomas, who leads the Kearney Consumer Institute at Kearney.
Here for the boos
If it feels like ghosts and goblins are making an early appearance in stores, that’s because they are.
In the nearly 20 years the National Retail Federation has been tracking the season, Halloween spending is up over 250%. Furthermore, it was projected to hit a record $12.2 billion last year. This year’s forecast is down slightly from that high, with an estimated $11.6 billion in spend.
Halloween spending has steadily increased over nearly 20 years
Sales, in billions, from 2005 to 2024.
The rise in popularity of creepy season might be because it’s the first big holiday after July 4. Yet, it may be better to look at what is going on with holidays overall to explain consumer behavior, according to Karthik Easwar, teaching professor of marketing at Georgetown University.
“I feel that every holiday is seeing a growth in the spend and in terms of the amount that people decorate and have themed activities,” Easwar said.
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Part of the increased popularity in Halloween may be a reaction from the pandemic. At the height of the global health crisis, consumers were going through extreme isolation. And some of that has continued. “So much more of our life has become isolated. We work from home, we order food straight into our home, and then we watch streaming at home, and you don’t necessarily go out and about as much,” Easwar said.
The holidays “are ways to have a reason to bring people together. It’s a reason to talk to people, it’s a reason to do something, it’s a reason to go out,” he said. “You need these motivators to say, ‘Oh, it’s Halloween, let’s go out.’”
Thomas also points to the pandemic to explain the expanding holiday season. “For all the analysis we did on what behaviors would be sticky post pandemic, I think one of the stickiest is longer holiday seasons,” Thomas said.
Why? Because it plays on a sense of nostalgia, community and feelings of comfort. It also might be a “welcome distraction,” especially in an election year.
“We’ve just seen people kind of embrace it and feel like, ‘If I’m going to make this investment in this decor, why not bring it out a bit earlier?’” she said.
Spooky season (and the 2024 emphasis on value)
For home improvement retailers specifically, Halloween is a boon. The segment traditionally sees the height of product spending in the spring. However, in recent years these retailers have capitalized on autumnal products, resulting in boosted revenues and an increase in store traffic in the fall.
Home Depot in particular was at one point the center of the Halloween craze. At the height of the pandemic, the company introduced a $299 12-foot skeleton, Skelly, which sold out and became a viral hit.
And while Home Depot may have accelerated the importance of Halloween decor in the zeitgeist, this year it is pushing something that has increasingly become important in an era of inflation: value. Home Depot is emphasizing value by showing seasonal products at different price points and stating that, even after five seasons, Skelly’s price remains the same