Each fall in the United States and Canada, approximately 1,500 empty storefronts are occupied by Spirit Halloween’s signature yellow, orange and black signs. The seasonal store sells Halloween masks, Halloween costumes, Halloween costumes for dogs, Halloween decorations, creepy robots and various different types of fake blood. And they do it to the tune of approx a billion dollars a year in salesaccording to some estimates. While Spirit stores come ashore each August, all of their physical locations are closed by early November.

Despite being a pop-up shop, Spirit has developed a cult following. YouTube creators love to post videos of the “opening day” of their local Spirit locations, and there are songs and even an independent horror movie dedicated to the haunted shop.

The past few years have been reflected upon a ‘retail apocalypse’ for many companieswith many physical chains closing their physical locations. So what does it say about the retail world that a seasonal Halloween store takes over all these abandoned storefronts for three months out of the year and makes a killing in the process?

The early days of the mind

Before becoming a dealer in all things Halloween, Joe Marver was the owner of Spirit Discount Women’s Apparel, a clothing store in the Bay Area. In the early 1980s, Marver watched as customers flocked to a dancewear store across the street from the strip mall, which grew in popularity every year around spooky season.

“They stood around the block for the entire month of October, and it was crazy because our October stunk,” Marver says.

In 1983, the dancewear store closed. And Marver decided he couldn’t let those customers go elsewhere. So he put the women’s clothes in the basement and bought a whole bunch of Halloween costumes, for just one month, which gave rise to the first version of Spirit Halloween. By the following year, Marver had expanded to a second location, which raised a whopping $100,000. Soon he had six stores, and soon he had franchises across the state, opening only on a seasonal basis.

Spirit locations were built for the short term, with materials that could be built up and taken down quickly. “I remember when the display tables were actually the cardboard boxes that the merchandise came in,” says Mike Olsen, a real estate agent who started working with Spirit in the 1980s and is still with the company. “You stacked these boxes in the middle of the sales floor, put a black cloth over them, and that was your display table.”

The hermit crab of retail

Spirit grew quickly, but early in the company’s development, Joe, Mike and their team encountered a major obstacle. Very few landlords wanted to rent their space to a company that would put down its stake for eight weeks and then leave the space abandoned. “I would call landlords and other real estate agents,” Olsen says of the early days, “and they would look at you like you had three heads.”

Olsen says he would explore new markets and abandoned big box stores, looking for business owners who could take his call. Mike recalls getting creative to win over a potential landlord with a range of available spaces, sending a severed arm as a prank. “I stapled it to a piece of cardboard, put my business card on it and then put the gentleman’s name there: ‘Hey, lend me a hand. I need your location here.’” Eventually the trick worked and he got the deal.

If any of these stores were to close, landlords would be stuck because these spaces were purpose-built and difficult to reuse. It was not possible to put a hospital or an apartment building in an old big box unless a potential owner completely redeveloped the property and applied for changes to the local zoning plan.

Although Spirit occasionally took up residence in an old bank or, once, a defunct church, their focus has always been on abandoned big box stores. According to Joe Marver, the best space for Spirit is just over 10,000 square feet, preferably across the parking lot from another popular store. “If there was a lot of traffic, and it was a corner across the street, a Lowe’s or a Home Depot, that would be enough of a draw,” Marver says.

The corporate era

After 16 years in business, Joe Marver sold Spirit Halloween to Spencer’s Gifts, a shopping center that most Americans will know for their nice selection of lava lamps and novelty T-shirts. Since 1999, under corporate ownership, Spirit has grown from 65 locations to approximately 1,500.

In some ways, Spirit has become a more polished operation. Until recently, the company was known for making “knock-off” costumes for popular characters, including a “Sidekick Bros” outfit that looked suspiciously like Super Mario and Luigi. Today, the company licenses characters from Disney, Marvel and Nintendo.

But not everything in their company is ‘independent’. Spirit’s physical locations are still temporary in nature. Their yellow-black-orange logo still appears on a tarp in front of each storefront. Their display is still made of pegboard. And they’re still following the same real estate strategy, filling abandoned big box stores every fall.

Mike Olsen, the real estate broker, says Spirit was able to take advantage of empty storefronts left behind by former brands like Comp USA, Circuit City and Borders Books in the 1990s. After the 2008 financial crisis, even more space became available. “I think the Phoenix Metro area once had 256 empty retail boxes, big boxes (in 2009). Make your choice,” says Olsen.

This real estate plan has become a meme online. “You’ve probably seen the memes that say that when the government closes its doors, for example, someone puts up the Spirit Halloween banner, you know, super imposes it on the White House,” says Olsen.

This has led some critics to call Spirit Halloween “the Grim Reaper of retail.” Rachel Quednau, program director at Strong Towns, wrote an essay in 2021, criticizing what Spirit has come to represent, say their success is due in large part to the failed policy of suburban-style development.

“If our cities are thinking about what is a long-term financial benefit to our residents, then we shouldn’t be thinking about pursuing large-scale businesses in the short term,” Quednau says.

“Honestly, I think the best-case scenario, for all the huge big stores that are now empty, is to knock them down and let them return to the earth, especially if they are on the outskirts of town where it is difficult is to destroy them. access without car.”

Quednau adds, “I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with Spirit. It’s more of a symptom of a bigger problem.”

“If our cities are thinking about what is a long-term financial benefit to our residents, then we shouldn’t be thinking about pursuing large-scale businesses in the short term,” Quednau says.

For his part, Mike Olsen believes that Spirit serves a larger function in the retail economy with their temporary staffings. “We’ve cleaned more floors, replaced more light bulbs and repaired more HVAC units across the country than I would think any other retailer could do right now,” he says.
“When we enter a space, we need that space to look good. And often when a retailer leaves a space, it does not leave it in a condition that is ready to be occupied.”

While it’s tempting to call Spirit a “Grim Reaper” or a “zombie,” a more apt metaphor might be a hermit crab, a creature that takes up abandoned storefronts as temporary homes because they are so easily available.

Epilogue

This is the 600th episode of 99PI! And today marks producer Chris Berube’s fifth anniversary with the show. We are incredibly grateful to our listeners for listening and supporting us all these years, and to Chris for producing this really fun episode. Here’s to 600 more!