Business

Beyond Halloween, Costumes Generate Sales

For her Hollywood-themed, July 2014 birthday party, Lashauna Carr peeled a vintage white tuxedo from a rack of costumes at Halloween Adventure.

“The atmosphere is creepy and great,” said Carr, 30, describing the West Village costume store where she shopped days before that birthday.

Though its gory gear—and its glamorous and other non-gory items—mainly target a Halloween crowd, the establishment at 3rd Avenue and 11th Street stays open year-round. The roughly eight weeks leading up to Halloween may be the busiest time for sales, but the cash register keeps ringing during the remaining 10 months of the year.

“Sales continue,” said Tony Bianchi, 69, the store’s owner and a 30-year veteran of the costume business. “Celebrity needs, films, tourists, parades, World Cup finals and the Super Bowl generate profits.”

Forty percent of Halloween Adventure’s profits roll in outside of the Halloween season, added Bianchi, who also manages the business that he purchased 18 years ago.

Across the country, Halloween customers were projected to spend $6.9 billion on that holiday’s costuming in 2013, according to a National Retail Federation estimate in October 2013. That compared to $8 billion in customer spending in 2012.

The shelves and racks inside Bianchi’s two-story store are stocked with stuff worn and used by ghosts, goblins, clowns, banshees, superheroes, assorted monsters and other characters. There are axes, swords, daggers, guns, machetes, chain saws. There are skeletal heads, masks sparkling with glitter and those with fake blood streaming down.

The store, which also ships its online orders internationally, outfits those who want costumes for Thanksgiving, Christmas, 4th of July and other holidays. Police and firefighter costumes are available. Costumes depicting characters and fashion from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and other eras also are there.

Bianchi knows that fans mourn when a big star dies. He sympathizes with them. He also prefers for those high-profile passings to happen sooner than later. “Manufacturing takes time,” he said.

Politics has been good for business, too. Bianchi said he made plenty of money off the former President Bill Clinton‘s face following the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Horror and sci-fi villains such as Darth Vader, Freddie Kruger, Chucky and Jason, though, are his biggest sellers, Bianchi said.

As for summertime customer Carr, she planned for her boyfriend to wear the tuxedo she was carrying to the cash register. He would be mimicking a high-styling Hollywood movie character from decades ago.

“I shop here because of the variety that the store gives,” said Carr, a former costume designer who now teaches kindergarteners.

Mansura Yapur is one of the Halloween Adventure employees who assist and advise customers such as Carr.

“It can get really busy at certain times of the year,” said Yapur, who went on the store’s payroll two years ago. “Especially when foreigners come to go shopping for people back home.”

“The employees are always willing to help and are very friendly,” Carr said. “That’s another reason why I like shopping here.”