At the end of each summer, when the first few leaves begin to change color and the Fourth of July decorations are long gone, the mysterious Spirit Halloween stores seem to emerge from the depths of your local abandoned department stores. These massive warehouses filled with every costume you could possibly imagine are only around for two months, and yet they bring in an estimated $528 million dollars in annual revenue. How does Spirit Halloween do it, and where did it even come from?
Spirit Halloween was founded by Joe Marver in 1983, originally as one pop-up store in a California mall. Marver’s brand quickly spread to 63 more stores around the country before being bought by Spencer Gifts, also known as Spencer’s. Spencer Gifts — a retailer known for funny t-shirts and cheap sex toys — are open year-round and have several locations throughout the country, so the company is making money even when Spirit Halloweens aren’t open.
This year, participation in Halloween festivities is supposed to reach pre-pandemic levels, meaning Spirit Halloween’s 1,400 brick-and-mortar locations are bound to get busy. But if Spencer’s doesn’t own any of these locations, how do they manage to camp out in the abandoned storefronts for just two months?
If you remember your local Toys “R” Us shutting down, or Sears filing for bankruptcy in 2018, then you’ve seen the effects of “the retail apocalypse.” These retailers once occupied massive spaces in American strip malls, but the rise of online shopping has hurt these department stores and deemed them borderline irrelevant. Almost scarily well-aligned with a Halloween retailer, the retail apocalypse has skyrocketed Spirit Halloween’s success. With so many recently empty warehouses and department stores, property owners are struggling to find permanent tenants and are often left with renting to Spirit Halloween as their only option. Spirit Halloween’s real estate team begins to look for new abandoned retail locations in early November — immediately after their previous stores close for the season. Until the market finds a solution for the empty space left behind by the retail apocalypse, Spirit Halloween’s real estate team shouldn’t have a problem with their search.
Spirit Halloween’s one-stop-shop model also draws in a lot of revenue. Almost 70% of Spirit Halloween’s business happens in the two weeks leading up to the holiday. Because most people do their Halloween shopping last minute, the lack of established organization and decor in the stores doesn’t turn anyone away. In fact, the lack of spending on embellishments and their extremely high costume prices (see $69.99 for a vampire costume) take advantage of their market and drive profits up. One shopper tweeted that she was “at a Halloween store that used to be at a babies r us and it’s so surreal” with a photo of the Spirit Halloween’s interior; the ghost of the previous retailer manifested itself through the remaining baby stock photos hanging from the ceiling.
The costume and accessory retailer has a philanthropic side to it as well: Spirit Halloween has raised over $50 million for pediatric hospital patients, providing them with toys, games, costumes, and pet therapy. This initiative, called “Spirit of Children,” was launched in 2007 and continues to grow with Spirit Halloween’s popularity (so maybe the baby banners were left in the abandoned Babies “R” Us on purpose).
So, next time you see an abandoned department store in your local strip mall in the middle of June, remember that a famous Spirit Halloween store could be there in a few short months.
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