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Short Stuff: The Story of Spirit Halloween · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave, of course,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and that makes this short stuff.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Big. Thanks to Medium, Nprstrongtowns dot Org, the list in
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Bloomberg for this.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I'll bet, I'll bet I can guess the Strongtowns dot
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Org section. I want to read part of it. Okay, okay,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: So Chuck, we're talking today about Spirit Halloween, not the
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: spirit of Halloween, as Jerry likes to say, just spirit Halloween, right,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: And if you live outside of the United States, you
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: might not know what that is. As far as I know,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: they're not out of North America yet, but just give
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: it some time as Halloween spread, so too, we'll spirit Halloween.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Spirit Halloween in the US is well known for being
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: essentially a giant Halloween pop up store that sprout up
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: like mushrooms all over the country in abandoned well old malls,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: old big box stores that are no longer in use,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: strip malls, anywhere they can set up shop with about
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: seven to ten thousand square feet and start selling a
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: halloweench mortgas board of stuff.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: That's right. They have more than I think, more than
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: fifteen hundred. I also sell fourteen hundred, so somewhere in
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: that range of stores, again only seasonal locations, and it
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: has become a meme that's kind of fun around Halloween,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: whenever there's an abandoned thing or anything that would be
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: funny to put a Spirit Halloween banner across. One of
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: the most fun ones I saw was when like the
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: US government shuts down because they can't agree on a
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: funding bill, there will be like a Spirit Halloween banner
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: memed over the White House, that kind of thing, because
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: that's what they do. I looked up today just for funsies.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Atlanta the Metro Atlanta area has twenty one Spirit Halloweens
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: this year.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Maybe someday we'll get to that twenty two.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Maybe I mean some just within miles of one another. Yeah,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: but this is not the most unusual thing in the world.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: There's a long tradition of pop ups and seasonal pop
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: ups here in North America, certainly around Christmas time, with
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Christmas tree lots, some seasonal Christmas shops opening up and
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: popping up, carnivals, flea markets, that kind of thing. America
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: is well known for having these kind of temporary businesses
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: that pop up for a week or two, maybe in
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: this case a short season, and then they shut it
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: down and that place is now a parking lot again
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: or an old rich way that is no longer in business.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: So this is the part that I'm guessing where Strongtowns
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: dot Org comes in, because this section seems really emphatic
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: about discussing how great pop up stores are for local communities.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Quote, I'd like to read because I think it's awesome. Yes,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: there's plenty to like and appreciate about a temporary shop
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: that provides an opportunity for entrepreneurs to sell their wares
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and activates an empty space.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was definitely from Strong down Stuff for.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: So back to Spirit Halloween, because yes, there's other seasonal
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: pop up stores, but this is the seasonal pop up
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: store we're talking about. It was founded about forty years
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: ago in the early eighties by a guy named Joe Marver,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and he didn't start out selling halloween stuff, So he
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: started out selling reasonably priced women's apparel.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the store was called Just Spirit Women's Discount Apparel.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: It was a little wordy. As the story goes, he
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: was working in that store or you know, owning that
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: store and working there, I guess in October, looked across
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: the street and there was a Halloween costume shop that
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: was killing it, and he was just like, nobody's buying
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: in my discounted women's apparel. Everyone's buying these Halloween costumes.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Look at this dress with the shoulder pads. You could
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: turn this down.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: It's almost the costume in itself. And he was like,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: all right, I'm struggling here. They seem to be onto something.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Eventually that like, that's where the seat is planned. Eventually
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: that costume shop moves locations, and then Joe sees his
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: opportunity and is like, nuts to these dresses. They're going
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: in storage. October is approaching fast, and I'm gonna sell
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Halloween stuff. And he sells through the roof and is like,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: I'm onto something here.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: So yes, he has the best October he's ever had.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Like you said, he thinks he's onto something. So the
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: next year he does it again, but this time, rather
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: than put all his dresses in storage, he leases a
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: temporary space. So he's starting to see like the contours
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: of spirit Halloween forming at the edges here. And in
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: thirty days he sells one hundred thousand I'm assuming early eighties,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, it was worth of Halloween
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: stuff in just again thirty days. And he was like,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely onto something here. I'm going to go all
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: in on this Halloween thing. And sure, I'll sell some
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: dresses during the rest of the year, but this Halloween
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: thing is really a big deal to me. Now.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a quote that I've actually seen
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: from Joe Marburn that I still can't make sense of.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: I didn't invent temporary sales, but I feel like I
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: invented temporary Halloween.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: I don't understand that, because what is permanent Halloween?
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Halloween had been like a twelve month out of
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the year tradition until Joe Marvar came along, right.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: I guess. So, So that one that's just sort of
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: a funny quote. He seems like that kind of guy.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: So I say, we take a break and we'll come
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: back and talk about how the thing grew from that one,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: that one empty store, to say, fifteen hundred locations, twenty
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: one of them in Atlanta alone.
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: Stuff, you should know, stop, you should I should know.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: All Right, So Joe Marber is crushing it. Over the
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: next fifteen years, he grows to about sixty pop ups.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: This is roughly ninety seven ninety eight or so, and
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: the name of the store is officially Spirit Halloween by
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: that point. It changed along the way, and he said,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: you know, one of the big keys to his growth
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: plan is presence, like billboards and stuff like that, ads,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: getting like you mentioned, maybe up to a ten thousand
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: square foot storefront, hopefully close to another big anchor store
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: like a wal Mart or a Target or something like that,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: or maybe a popular shopping center, and then to expand.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: The other key is to expand beyond just costumes, so
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: you can get like anything Halloween in there. Decorations are
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: a big, big part of what they sell.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you want a plastic battle axe to use for
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: your LARPing during the rest of the year, you go
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: to Spirit Halloween here in the United States, that's right,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: but you.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Better do it between August and November.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy that they even open in early August,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: but I guess that's true, even though it turns out
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: that they do most of their business the last two
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: weeks of October, which duh, Yeah, I can't remember. There
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: was a Simpsons episode that where somebody invested in pumpkin
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: futures and that they paid off in like November. I
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: can't remember who that happened to. I want to say
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Principal Skinner doesn't sound right.
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: That's funny.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: So it turns out that Joe Marv doesn't own Spirit
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Halloween anymore. He founded it, but he also sold it
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine. He was probably worried about the
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Y two K bug and he's like, this is your
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: problem now, and he sold it to Spencer's Gifts, which
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense now that I hear it.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I believe Spencer's is still around. I think it's gone
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: more toward like a journey or a Pacific Coast kind
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: of place, whereas before it was this weird mashup of
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: everything sexy, bongie, grateful, deady, like the weird plasma ball
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: that you touch and the electricity goes to your hand,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: but somehow it doesn't electrocute you. Like all of that
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: stuff was in Spencer's Gifts. It was the place to
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: go in the mall when you were ten years old
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: in the eighties.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Oh you bet, especially if you're a young Baptist kid,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: because you could you could be like, hey, mom, I'm
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: going to go here to look at posters, and you
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: know the posters were probably women in bikinis on a Lamborghini.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: That was also the for boating section. Remember that one
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: that had all manner of bedroom toys.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like legit ones, not just like Gag Gift, like
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: you know the heavy Hitters, right, there was actually one
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: called the heavy hit probably, but.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you could if you were in the wrong part
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: of Spencer Gifts when you were a ten or twelve
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: year old. It was a very embarrassing thing for me,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: but very titillating as well at the same time. So anyway,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: legendary eighties store, as the legend has it, they were
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Joe marbur was at a trade show in Manhattan. The
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: executive from Spencer Gift says, come with me, gets them
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: in a limo, takes them to Spencer headquarters in New Jersey,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: cuts them a big check. It's an undisclosed them out.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Could not find out how much, but it had to
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: have been a lot of money because in twenty thirteen,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: this is eleven years ago, half Spencer Gifts yearly earnings,
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: which was about two hundred and fifty million back then,
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: came from Spirit Halloween. I guarantee you it's way way
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: more than that ban now.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So just to kind of get back
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: into the nuts and bolts, they hire about twenty five
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: thousand temporary employees just for you know, that August to
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: the end of October. The stores officially closed on November two.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Little known fact Spirit Halloween is a twelve month a
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: year business online. Yeah, of course, it's just as retail
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: stores aren't open during that time. And even before they
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: close toward Halloween, they're starting to plan for next year
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: and they start like looking for retail spaces to take over.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: They start negotiating with landlords. They hire a bunch of
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: district managers who manage about three to four stores each,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and they get to go to New Jersey on a
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: big trip for a week long training seminar, and then
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: by the time August rolls around again, they're doing it
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: again in for the couple of months before Halloween.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're a senior director, or at least at the time
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: of this writing, their senior director of real estate's god
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: named Frank Pasera. And can you imagine how hard that
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: job is to open up fifteen hundred and negotiate those
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: leases fifteen hundred temporary stores just on the real estate side,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: like forget training all those employees. There's a pretty fun
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: article if anyone feels like reading more about Spirit Halloween
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: on slate. I think written by an employee. He was
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: one of those managers. And it wasn't like some horror
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: story like oh god, it was awful. It was more
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: just like it's a crazy experience because I'll bet everything
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: is moving so fast and there's so much inventory, and
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: none of these employees, like everyone is temporary, so it's
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: just a crazy but fun environment it seems like to
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: work in.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I'll bet keeping things stocked is like sacrosanct
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: there because you got to get rid of as much
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: as possible, although they do say about thirty to forty
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: percent of it carries over from year to year. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they lost their shirts on Justin Bieber costumes
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: one year, right, and that probably happens. But you know
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: you're always going to make the money on Michael Meyer's stuff, right.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, you got a Halloween costume together for
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: this year? Are you going to do anything?
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know. You me usually comes up with those.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I just go along with them because they're always brilliant
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: and I can't think of anything. So I'm not sure
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: what she's got up her sleeves this year. Probably something
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: really good.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: I gotcha nice.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: So there's one other thing we should talk about from
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Spirit Halloween that you dug up is they are really
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: into charity for children's hospitals, and it's pretty awesome what
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: they do.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they partnered. I mean essentially, what they're trying to
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: do is bring, you know, not the spirit of Christmas
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: to children's hospitals, but the spirit of Halloween to make
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: hospitals less scary in an ironic twist.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. It's called Spirit of Children. You can
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: donate online to it, you can donate in the store.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: You can donate as little as a dollar and they'll
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: say thank you. But they not just Halloween. So around Halloween,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: these about one hundred and fifty children's hospitals get care
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: packages with costumes and decorations and all that stuff. Because
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: think about it, when you're a little kid, you're sick
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: in the hospital, missing Halloween. Yeah, that sucks on top
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: of having to be in the hospital in the first place. Course,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: but for the rest of the year. They support programs,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: they pay for equipment, like they cover these children's hospitals,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and it's pretty cool. It's a really great program. I
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: had no idea about it. But if you go to
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Spirit Halloween this year, maybe drop a buck in their
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Spirit of Children collection thing or go online and donate.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: But the great thing about it is one hundred percent
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: of those donations go to this program.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: That's right. And we've been singing the praises of this
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: fun store. I hope it's not exposed to some awful
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: thing because it seems to be what it is, which
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: is just a pretty successful fun store supporting a fun holiday.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: And I hope they're not advertising on the podcast right now,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: because if so, it's a coincidence. Everybody we weren't paid to.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Do getting me they totally should. We should tell sales
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: about this.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, then Chuck brought this on. It's okay. I
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: don't think we have anything else about Spirit Halloween, right, Nope?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: All right, Well then short stuff is out.
• 14:29
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• 14:32
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