This year, as inflation continues to eat away at the retail sector’s sales, the holidays will be more important than ever. Halloween may not be the biggest spending holiday of the year, but as the actual holiday shopping season has increasingly started earlier, it has become a bellwether for how the rest of the shopping season will go.
“What’s going to happen this holiday season is completely unpredictable,” said Nikki Baird, vp of strategy at retail technology company Aptos. “But this year, I will definitely be watching Halloween sales.
Right now, there are indications that Halloween spending will be up this year. The National Retail Federation is projecting retail sales this Halloween season to be around $12 billion, up from $10.6 billion last year. Fashion brands have capitalized on Halloween in a number of ways. Forever 21 has offered a costume shop throughout the month of October, while cosmetic brands like Dezi Skin and Ipsy have advertised everything from Halloween makeup to products for removing Halloween makeup.
According to data provided by Grips Intelligence, Halloween sales are already up 34% year-over-year. In September, Americans spent $81 million on Halloween costumes, a 4% increase over 2022. John Fetto, head of e-commerce insights at Grips Intelligence, said this is a positive sign for the rest of the season.
“Halloween is the new Thanksgiving, marking the beginning of the winter holiday season,” Fetto said. “Our data confirms that consumers are getting an earlier start to their Halloween shopping this year, which has led to overall increases in key categories. That should come as a positive sign for retailers and brands trying to read the tea leaves ahead of the Christmas season.”
It’s a particularly good sign given the many factors working against the idea of a fruitful holiday season for retailers. In addition to continued inflation and reduced discretionary spending, consumers are also dealing with student loans.
“Halloween is the first real indicator after the resumption of student loans,” Baird said. “It’s a pretty discretionary spending kind of holiday, and the people spending on that holiday are most likely to be impacted by student loan payments.”
For some retailers, their winter holiday campaigns have already gone into full swing, merging the whole Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas spread into one large shopping season. For its part, Neiman Marcus launched its full winter holiday campaign on October 25.
“It’s always a fine balance of how early we start our holiday campaign,” said Nabil Aliffi, chief brand officer at Neiman Marcus. “We spend a lot of time at the beginning of the year planning the rollout and phases so that we’re ready to go when our customer is ready.”
