Spirit Halloween is channeling its inner Tim Burton and his holiday masterpiece, The Nightmare Before Christmas, by turning a handful of its spooky pop-up shops into Spirit Christmas stores this winter.
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The company is testing the appetite for its offerings beyond Halloween with a pilot program of 10 Spirit Christmas stores, including former Spirit Halloween locations and some new spots. The test locations are concentrated in the Northeast, with four in New Jersey, three in New York, and one in each of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
“Spirit Christmas is a new concept for us, and we’re hopeful it will resonate with our customers,” a Spirit Halloween spokesperson told Bisnow in an email Wednesday. “Our goal is to create a festive retail experience that captures the spirit of the season, much like we do for Halloween.”
The concept's flagship is in Mays Landing, New Jersey, and is slated to open Oct. 18, CoStar News reports. The rest of the locations will open in November and run operations through the holidays.
The retailer is entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist as it disappears almost as soon as it sets up shop, so much so that Saturday Night Live parodied it in a sketch at the end of September. A record 1,525 Spirit Halloween shops opened across the country this year, inking temporary leases from August through November.
Halloween drives a lot of revenue. Total spending on the holiday is expected to reach $11.6B in 2024 after last year’s record high of $12.2B, according to the National Retail Federation.
Spirit Halloween is now hoping to capture a piece of the Christmas pie with its new offering, which could potentially spell longer leases if it is successful.
Spirit Christmas stores will offer an assortment of holiday decor, apparel, inflatables, gifts and stocking stuffers. Guests can also book a visit with Santa and receive a free digital postcard with him.
Consumer spending on the Christmas season is nearly 80 times more than their total spend on Halloween, with last year's NRF report forecasting a spend of between $957.3B and $966.6B.
