Can Celebrating Halloween Help Business Boom?

By Chris Kullstroem

Pictured: For years, Roger Williams Park Zoo held the Jack-o-Lantern Spectacular, an after-hours Halloween event held every weekend in October that brought in thousands of spectators, many of which were not regular visitors to the park.

Just around the start of October you start to see one or two of them pop up: small businesses taking an unusual twist on their everyday practice, turning bookstores, car washes, laundry mats and pizza places into trick-or-treat stations, face painting boutiques, haunted houses and more. The reasoning behind it is usually pretty simple: the owner or manager is a Halloween enthusiast just like you and me, and wants to bring some Halloween fun to the community. But could there be more to these transformations of monster mayhem? It may be that the Halloween enthusiasts aren’t the ones behind the operation, but the ones they’re trying to draw in.

After doing some research in the southeastern Connecticut region, studies show that not all businesses get the same results from going out of their way to celebrate Halloween – some see their profits soar while others can lose money from it. Two factors that tend to make the most difference are the location of the business and the originality of the event.

Small stores in a close-knit environment such as a plaza or mall who share a common Halloween event don’t tend to draw in the crowds they hope for. A mall holding a night of trick-or-treating on Halloween night, for example, drew in no new customers. It turned out that only regular customers brought their kids to the event, producing no extra sales that night, and in fact some stores lost business due to the heavy crowds of kids. No stores reported gaining any new long-term customers, or any increase in business there afterwards. The reasoning for this may very well have been that the theme of trick-or-treating lost it’s originality when almost every store in the mall participated, not allowing for any individual attention to be drawn to a specific store.

On the other hand, businesses that stand alone gain a lot more exposure, especially when their Halloween event is a new idea and in a good location. A small hands-on car wash in Connecticut put together a “haunted carwash” during the last few weekends in October, composed of a drive-through graveyard, witches brewing a smoldering cauldron by the roadside, eerie sound effects, spot lights, and finally monsters washing your car. The special effects and props could be seen by everyone driving by the main street location, and little advertising was needed as word spread fast of the intriguing haunted attraction.

The main goal of the car wash company was achieved as they gained new long-term customers both in and out of town, including people who did not ordinarily go out of their way to get a hands-on car wash. It is likely that a similar outcome could have occurred to the stores in the mall, had they tried a Halloween event that was unique from the other stores, and original enough to bring in new customers.

There are many different types of Halloween events and attractions that are perfect for smaller businesses, and they don’t have to be as extravagant as a drive-through haunted house. Other ideas to try include having Halloween craft stations for kids, holding a free or low-cost raffle with a Halloween-related prize, selling small Halloween items, putting out some spooky outdoor décor or sponsoring a local Halloween event. These small tributes to Halloween are all ways to bring attention to a business during the Halloween season. Creating a fun and unique Halloween experience will not only draw people in to see what’s in store, but will make regular customers out of all those Halloween enthusiasts who want to see their style continue in the future.