Hey, welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave, of course, and that makes this short stuff.
Big. Thanks to Medium, Nprstrongtowns dot Org, the list in Bloomberg for this.
I'll bet, I'll bet I can guess the Strongtowns dot Org section. I want to read part of it. Okay, okay, So Chuck, we're talking today about Spirit Halloween, not the spirit of Halloween, as Jerry likes to say, just spirit Halloween, right, And if you live outside of the United States, you might not know what that is. As far as I know, they're not out of North America yet, but just give it some time as Halloween spread, so too, we'll spirit Halloween.
Spirit Halloween in the US is well known for being essentially a giant Halloween pop up store that sprout up like mushrooms all over the country in abandoned well old malls, old big box stores that are no longer in use, strip malls, anywhere they can set up shop with about seven to ten thousand square feet and start selling a halloweench mortgas board of stuff.
That's right. They have more than I think, more than fifteen hundred. I also sell fourteen hundred, so somewhere in that range of stores, again only seasonal locations, and it has become a meme that's kind of fun around Halloween, whenever there's an abandoned thing or anything that would be
funny to put a Spirit Halloween banner across. One of the most fun ones I saw was when like the US government shuts down because they can't agree on a funding bill, there will be like a Spirit Halloween banner memed over the White House, that kind of thing, because that's what they do. I looked up today just for funsies. Atlanta the Metro Atlanta area has twenty one Spirit Halloweens this year.
Maybe someday we'll get to that twenty two.
Maybe I mean some just within miles of one another. Yeah, but this is not the most unusual thing in the world. There's a long tradition of pop ups and seasonal pop ups here in North America, certainly around Christmas time, with Christmas tree lots, some seasonal Christmas shops opening up and
popping up, carnivals, flea markets, that kind of thing. America is well known for having these kind of temporary businesses that pop up for a week or two, maybe in this case a short season, and then they shut it down and that place is now a parking lot again or an old rich way that is no longer in business.
So this is the part that I'm guessing where Strongtowns dot Org comes in, because this section seems really emphatic about discussing how great pop up stores are for local communities.
Yeah.
Quote, I'd like to read because I think it's awesome. Yes, there's plenty to like and appreciate about a temporary shop that provides an opportunity for entrepreneurs to sell their wares and activates an empty space.
Yeah, that was definitely from Strong down Stuff for.
So back to Spirit Halloween, because yes, there's other seasonal pop up stores, but this is the seasonal pop up store we're talking about. It was founded about forty years ago in the early eighties by a guy named Joe Marver, and he didn't start out selling halloween stuff, So he started out selling reasonably priced women's apparel.
Yeah, the store was called Just Spirit Women's Discount Apparel. It was a little wordy. As the story goes, he was working in that store or you know, owning that store and working there, I guess in October, looked across the street and there was a Halloween costume shop that was killing it, and he was just like, nobody's buying in my discounted women's apparel. Everyone's buying these Halloween costumes.
Look at this dress with the shoulder pads. You could turn this down.
It's almost the costume in itself. And he was like, all right, I'm struggling here. They seem to be onto something. Eventually that like, that's where the seat is planned. Eventually that costume shop moves locations, and then Joe sees his opportunity and is like, nuts to these dresses. They're going in storage. October is approaching fast, and I'm gonna sell Halloween stuff. And he sells through the roof and is like, I'm onto something here.
So yes, he has the best October he's ever had. Like you said, he thinks he's onto something. So the next year he does it again, but this time, rather than put all his dresses in storage, he leases a temporary space. So he's starting to see like the contours of spirit Halloween forming at the edges here. And in thirty days he sells one hundred thousand I'm assuming early eighties, one hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, it was worth of Halloween stuff in just again thirty days. And he was like,
I'm definitely onto something here. I'm going to go all in on this Halloween thing. And sure, I'll sell some dresses during the rest of the year, but this Halloween thing is really a big deal to me. Now.
Yeah, and this is a quote that I've actually seen from Joe Marburn that I still can't make sense of. I didn't invent temporary sales, but I feel like I invented temporary Halloween.
Yeah.
I don't understand that, because what is permanent Halloween?
Yeah, Halloween had been like a twelve month out of the year tradition until Joe Marvar came along, right.
I guess. So, So that one that's just sort of a funny quote. He seems like that kind of guy.
So I say, we take a break and we'll come back and talk about how the thing grew from that one, that one empty store, to say, fifteen hundred locations, twenty one of them in Atlanta alone.
Yeah.
Stuff, you should know, stop, you should I should know.
All Right, So Joe Marber is crushing it. Over the next fifteen years, he grows to about sixty pop ups. This is roughly ninety seven ninety eight or so, and the name of the store is officially Spirit Halloween by
that point. It changed along the way, and he said, you know, one of the big keys to his growth plan is presence, like billboards and stuff like that, ads, getting like you mentioned, maybe up to a ten thousand square foot storefront, hopefully close to another big anchor store like a wal Mart or a Target or something like that, or maybe a popular shopping center, and then to expand. The other key is to expand beyond just costumes, so
you can get like anything Halloween in there. Decorations are a big, big part of what they sell.
Yeah, you want a plastic battle axe to use for your LARPing during the rest of the year, you go to Spirit Halloween here in the United States, that's right, but you.
Better do it between August and November.
Yeah, it's crazy that they even open in early August, but I guess that's true, even though it turns out that they do most of their business the last two weeks of October, which duh, Yeah, I can't remember. There was a Simpsons episode that where somebody invested in pumpkin futures and that they paid off in like November. I can't remember who that happened to. I want to say Principal Skinner doesn't sound right.
That's funny.
So it turns out that Joe Marv doesn't own Spirit Halloween anymore. He founded it, but he also sold it in nineteen ninety nine. He was probably worried about the Y two K bug and he's like, this is your problem now, and he sold it to Spencer's Gifts, which makes a lot of sense now that I hear it.
I believe Spencer's is still around. I think it's gone more toward like a journey or a Pacific Coast kind of place, whereas before it was this weird mashup of everything sexy, bongie, grateful, deady, like the weird plasma ball that you touch and the electricity goes to your hand, but somehow it doesn't electrocute you. Like all of that stuff was in Spencer's Gifts. It was the place to go in the mall when you were ten years old in the eighties.
Oh you bet, especially if you're a young Baptist kid, because you could you could be like, hey, mom, I'm going to go here to look at posters, and you know the posters were probably women in bikinis on a Lamborghini. That was also the for boating section. Remember that one that had all manner of bedroom toys.
Yeah, like legit ones, not just like Gag Gift, like you know the heavy Hitters, right, there was actually one called the heavy hit probably, but.
Yeah, you could if you were in the wrong part of Spencer Gifts when you were a ten or twelve year old. It was a very embarrassing thing for me, but very titillating as well at the same time. So anyway, legendary eighties store, as the legend has it, they were Joe marbur was at a trade show in Manhattan. The executive from Spencer Gift says, come with me, gets them in a limo, takes them to Spencer headquarters in New Jersey, cuts them a big check. It's an undisclosed them out.
Could not find out how much, but it had to have been a lot of money because in twenty thirteen, this is eleven years ago, half Spencer Gifts yearly earnings, which was about two hundred and fifty million back then, came from Spirit Halloween. I guarantee you it's way way more than that ban now.
Yeah, for sure. So just to kind of get back into the nuts and bolts, they hire about twenty five thousand temporary employees just for you know, that August to the end of October. The stores officially closed on November two. Little known fact Spirit Halloween is a twelve month a year business online. Yeah, of course, it's just as retail
stores aren't open during that time. And even before they close toward Halloween, they're starting to plan for next year and they start like looking for retail spaces to take over. They start negotiating with landlords. They hire a bunch of district managers who manage about three to four stores each, and they get to go to New Jersey on a big trip for a week long training seminar, and then by the time August rolls around again, they're doing it again in for the couple of months before Halloween.
Yeah, they're a senior director, or at least at the time of this writing, their senior director of real estate's god named Frank Pasera. And can you imagine how hard that job is to open up fifteen hundred and negotiate those leases fifteen hundred temporary stores just on the real estate side, like forget training all those employees. There's a pretty fun article if anyone feels like reading more about Spirit Halloween on slate. I think written by an employee. He was
one of those managers. And it wasn't like some horror story like oh god, it was awful. It was more just like it's a crazy experience because I'll bet everything is moving so fast and there's so much inventory, and none of these employees, like everyone is temporary, so it's just a crazy but fun environment it seems like to work in.
Yeah, man, I'll bet keeping things stocked is like sacrosanct there because you got to get rid of as much as possible, although they do say about thirty to forty percent of it carries over from year to year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure they lost their shirts on Justin Bieber costumes one year, right, and that probably happens. But you know you're always going to make the money on Michael Meyer's stuff, right.
Yeah, for sure, you got a Halloween costume together for this year? Are you going to do anything?
I don't know. You me usually comes up with those. I just go along with them because they're always brilliant and I can't think of anything. So I'm not sure what she's got up her sleeves this year. Probably something really good.
I gotcha nice.
So there's one other thing we should talk about from Spirit Halloween that you dug up is they are really into charity for children's hospitals, and it's pretty awesome what they do.
Yeah, they partnered. I mean essentially, what they're trying to do is bring, you know, not the spirit of Christmas to children's hospitals, but the spirit of Halloween to make hospitals less scary in an ironic twist.
Yeah, for sure. It's called Spirit of Children. You can donate online to it, you can donate in the store. You can donate as little as a dollar and they'll say thank you. But they not just Halloween. So around Halloween, these about one hundred and fifty children's hospitals get care packages with costumes and decorations and all that stuff. Because think about it, when you're a little kid, you're sick in the hospital, missing Halloween. Yeah, that sucks on top
of having to be in the hospital in the first place. Course, but for the rest of the year. They support programs, they pay for equipment, like they cover these children's hospitals, and it's pretty cool. It's a really great program. I had no idea about it. But if you go to Spirit Halloween this year, maybe drop a buck in their Spirit of Children collection thing or go online and donate. But the great thing about it is one hundred percent of those donations go to this program.
That's right. And we've been singing the praises of this fun store. I hope it's not exposed to some awful thing because it seems to be what it is, which is just a pretty successful fun store supporting a fun holiday.
And I hope they're not advertising on the podcast right now, because if so, it's a coincidence. Everybody we weren't paid to.
Do getting me they totally should. We should tell sales about this.
Okay, Well, then Chuck brought this on. It's okay. I don't think we have anything else about Spirit Halloween, right, Nope? All right, Well then short stuff is out.
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