How retailers’ ‘Summerween’ strategies are paying off
For many retailers, the weeks between July 4 and Labor Day have customarily been all about stocking up on lunch boxes, crayons and notebooks for back-to-school shopping. Now, store shelves are just as likely to be filled with cauldrons, candy corn and pumpkins.
This is Summerween. Retailers are embracing spooky season earlier than ever before, even in the middle of the summer — and it’s paying off. Sales have already eclipsed past years and many are ordering more products for the holiday than ever before as consumers’ appetite for all things Halloween reaches a fever pitch.
“We have already generated as much business in the last four weeks of Halloween this year that we did for the entire holiday last year,” said Beth Smith, managing director of Terrain, an Urban Outfitters brand.
Halloween is big money for retailers; last year, sales were estimated to hit a record $12.2 billion, according to the National Retail Federation’s annual holiday survey. With the newly dubbed Summerween holiday racking up around 71,000 hashtags on TikTok, retailers are betting that shoppers will treat themselves to gigantic skeletons and candy corn, even as they largely cut back on spending.
Retailers that spoke to Modern Retail for this story said they have been gradually launching their Halloween collections earlier in recent years thanks to growing customer demand. There isn’t one clear-cut reason, but retailers said Halloween has garnered a cult following that has only grown.
The increased interest in spooky season parallels Starbucks’ iconic pumpkin spice latte, which has likewise won a diehard fanbase. Starbucks officially made its autumn menu available to customers on Aug. 22, the earliest release in the company’s history. But Summerween, in particular — a reference to the animated mystery Disney TV show “Gravity Falls” — took off this year when TikTok users started showcasing their Summerween parties filled with jack-o’-lanterns made out of watermelons, orange-colored summer drinks and skeletons cooling off in inflatable pools.
The rise of Summerween also represents a broader shift in both consumer behavior and traditional promotional cycles. This year’s Prime Day had retailers push back-to-school deals early. Shoppers are also no longer waiting for Black Friday, with only 24% planning to hold off on their purchases compared to 34% in 2022, according to digital analytics company Quantum Metric.
In other words, the traditional retail calendar is becoming irrelevant.
Michaels’ first Halloween collection of the season hit store shelves in late June, the earliest ever start in the company’s history, according to Melissa Mills, senior vice president and general merchandising manager at Michaels. In 2021, Halloween goods weren’t for sale at Michaels’ stores until early August.
“Our ‘Hippie Hallow’ collection went viral on social media and sales have been beating our own expectations, with 15-plus top items selling through over 10 times faster than planned,” Mills said in an email statement. “It saw a stronger opening week compared to the more classic aesthetic of last year’s first collection.”
Home-improvement retailer Home Depot was the first major retailer to kick off the spooky season with its “Halfway to Halloween” sales event in April. In July, Home Depot leaned into the Summerween theme even more with a sneak preview at The Castle Hotel & Spa in Sleepy Hollow, New York, where the retailer decorated the century-old castle from top-to-bottom with its infamous 12-foot skeleton dubbed “Skelly” — which is known for selling out every year — a giant-sized headless horseman and more.
While the retailer declined to provide specific sales figures, Home Depot’s senior merchant overseeing holiday decor, Lance Allen, said the company has consistently grown its Halloween-related sales for the last five years.
“In the past, Halloween would only be a couple-week event, where people would start decorating mid-October,” Allen said in an interview. “It really changed in 2020 with Covid, where Halloween became this big event where people are putting stuff up for four or six weeks now.”
For home-improvement chains like Home Depot and Lowe’s, cashing in on Halloween fever during the summer months is an opportunity to rake in extra money at a time when a decline in home renovating spending post-pandemic, along with elevated mortgage rates, is hurting their earnings.
Independent sellers are reaping the rewards of Summerween, too. At Screamium in Long Beach, California, year-to-date sales have increased by 10 times more than last year’s sales during the same period, according to its owner Christopher Pratt.
The effects of Summerween are also being felt across the pond. Smiffys, a U.K.-based retailer, has seen a sales spike of 5% year over year, with sales rising since the beginning of August, according to Henry Peckett, the company’s e-commerce director.
Demand has been so intense that Anthropologie has ordered 60% more Halloween products compared to last year, according to Katherine Finder, AnthroLiving’s chief merchandising officer. “I think we could even have more,” Finder said in an interview, referring to the demand they’re seeing from customers this year. The company released its Halloween collection about a month earlier than usual this year, said Finder.
“We basically doubled our assortment,” said Terrain’s Smith.
In addition to ordering more products to meet the red-hot demand for all things Halloween, PetSmart is dedicating more floor space in stores to its seasonal collection. “You’ll see a more robust assortment, not just for cats and dogs, but even for small animals like bearded dragons and guinea pigs,” said Taylor Chamberlain, vice president of hardgoods merchandising at PetSmart. The retailer has also licensed pet costumes from major franchises like Deadpool and Beetlejuice.
At Home Depot, the internal team starts planning its Halloween assortment about 18 months in advance. Next year’s Halloween prep is already well underway. Product development is built from the ground up, said Allen, with new ideas first brought to life on a piece of paper or a whiteboard before they’re rendered into 3D digital models.
But earlier deadlines also mean it’s all hands on deck across departments to get Halloween products in the hands of eager customers on time.
As Anthropologie’s Finder put it, “We’re kind of shifting our mindset, and that means working earlier, having our concepts ready earlier and trying to get in the minds of customers earlier.”
Still, retailers acknowledged that even though consumers are eager for Halloween decor earlier than ever before, they’re still keeping last-minute shoppers in mind. Michaels’ Mills said the company times its assortment to roll out over several weeks to ensure they’re catering to customers who shop closer to October 31st.