AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
If it's fall in America, there are a few things you can count on. Pumpkin spice showing up on menus, rakes coming out of garages, and a certain retailer taking over a vacant storefront near you.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Spirit Halloween has everything you can imagine for Halloween. From classic...
RASCOE: And this year, it's not just the spooky stuff. Spirit Halloween is announcing a new venture, Spirit Christmas. Yes, Christmas in October. Alina Selyukh covers the consumer economy for NPR, and she joins us now. Hi Alina.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Hello, hello.
RASCOE: OK, so every year, these stores pop up just in time for Halloween and stay open for just six or eight weeks. You know, I always wonder, like, do these stores actually sustain the company for the rest of the year?
SELYUKH: Yeah, yeah. They do. Spirit Halloween does have a few permanent stores. It is also worth noting that Spirit Halloween is owned by the same parent company as Spencer's Gifts, which is, you know, your purveyor of lava lamps and gag gifts. But yeah, Halloween is still the make-it-or-break-it season.
RASCOE: Wow. So a whole chain built on just one holiday.
SELYUKH: Yeah, but it's a $12,000,000,000 business, Ayesha. I mean, we're spending $700,000,000 alone on pet costumes. Spirit Halloween even has its own movie.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SPIRIT HALLOWEEN: THE MOVIE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) But the store closed and we're still inside.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) You mean the store's locked and we're trapped inside.
SELYUKH: Setting the Hollywood dreams aside, people are spending about 100, 150 bucks on candy plus decorations and costumes, which most people are buying either at discount stores, dollar stores or specialty Halloween stores like Spirit Halloween.
RASCOE: So can you explain this business model? Because it does sound a bit risky.
SELYUKH: It is unusual. To be clear, it is a private company - Spirit Halloween - so we don't know for sure, all of the under-the-hood stuff. They do skip the most expensive parts of being a retailer. That's kind of how they save a lot of money on rent, utilities, workers. If you think about it, their stores - most of them are not permanent. Most of the store workers are temporary. Much of the year, Spirit Halloween mainly pays a big team to scout real estate locations, looking for empty store fronts. Then in late summer, the hustle starts for new stores to materialize. They've built over 1,000 of them.
RASCOE: That has to be a really big operation, like, turning all of these empty spaces into stores.
SELYUKH: It is, and it is very fast, too. You know, last year, I talked to a woman who worked at a mall where Spirit Halloween took over shuttered Sears, and she was describing an insane speed, like a matter of days. And I should say, I have tried a few times to get a tour of how Spirit Halloween works in an empty store or at least an interview with some official, and they don't do interviews.
RASCOE: So you got ghosted. You see what I did there.
SELYUKH: That's a good one. That's a good one.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
SELYUKH: Well, even "Saturday Night Live," though, has noticed Spirit Halloween.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Since 1983, Spirit Halloween has been helping our struggling communities by setting up shop in every vacant building in the country for six weeks. And then bouncing.
RASCOE: So, is it a good thing or a bad thing that these stores pop up and disappear like that?
SELYUKH: I've heard folks compare pop-ups to bottom feeders. Like, they don't make stores go out of business. They just take advantage of retail space that's already empty. You could argue that their presence delays someone more permanent filling the space, but it's not so often that there's a line of suitors just waiting for Spirit Halloween to leave, clamoring for that abandoned J.C. Penney.
RASCOE: I got to ask you about Spirit Christmas. Because is it what I'm picturing - like, a lot of plastic decorations, but in green and red?
SELYUKH: I think it's pretty much what you might picture. Spirit Halloween has been testing this Christmas idea for a while. It's now rolling out 10 stores, mainly New York and New Jersey. They will be open just through the winter holidays, so sticking with that business plan, and they say, we'll offer outfits, stocking stuffers, and, quote, "life-sized gingerbread village."
RASCOE: That's NPR's Alina Selyukh. Alina, thank you so much.
SELYUKH: Thank you. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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