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

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Every August, abandoned storefronts across America are filled with the spirit of Halloween, by way of the store, Spirit Halloween. Learn all about this wildly successful pop-up today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, Beau. Hey, Matt. Are you ready to tell the readers about the extra special episode we have coming up? I think we have to let them in on our little surprise. Yeah, if you haven't already figured it out, the queen of Christmas herself, can't believe this, Mariah Carey, will be joining us this week. Wow. Readers, publishers, caties, and finalists, tune in to maybe the most

unforgettable episode of Lost Culture Eastus yet. Listen to Lost Culture Eastus yet. Listen to Lost Culture Eastus on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too sitting in for Dave, of course, and that makes The short stuff. Woo-hoo!

Big thanks to Medium NPR, StrongTowns.org, The List, and Bloomberg for this. I'll bet I can guess the StrongTowns.org section. I want to read part of it, okay? Okay. So Chuck, we're talking today about Spirit Halloween. Not the spirit of Halloween, as Jerry likes to say, just Spirit Halloween. That's right. And if you live outside of the United States, you might not know what that is. As far as I know, they're not out of North America yet, but just give it some time. As Halloween spreads, so too will Spirit Halloween.

Spirit Halloween in the US is well known for being essentially a giant Halloween pop-up store that sprout up like mushrooms all over the country in abandoned malls, well, old malls, old big box stores that are no longer in use, strip malls, anywhere they can set up shop with about seven thousand to ten thousand square feet and start selling a Halloween smorgasbord of stuff. That's right. They have more than I think more than 1,500 I also sell 1,400 so somewhere in that range of stores

Again only seasonal locations. And it has become a meme that's kind of fun around Halloween whenever there's an abandoned thing or anything that would be funny to put a Spirit Halloween banner across. One of the most fun ones I saw was when like the US government shuts down because they can't agree on a funding bill.

There will be like a Spirit Halloween banner memed over the White House, that kind of thing. Because that's what they do. I looked up today just for funsies, Atlanta, the Metro Atlanta area has 21 Spirit Halloweens this year. Wow. Maybe someday we'll get to that 22. Maybe. I mean, some we'll get to that 22. Maybe. I mean, some just within miles of one another. Yeah. But this is not the most unusual thing in the world.

There's a long tradition of pop-ups and seasonal pop-ups here in North America, certainly around Christmas time, with Christmas tree lots, some seasonal Christmas shops opening up and popping up, carnivals, flea markets, that kind of thing. America is well known for having these kind of temporary businesses that pop up for, you know, a week or two, maybe in this case, a short season. And then they shut it down and that place is now a parking lot again or an old rich way that is no longer in business.

So this is the part that I'm guessing where strongtowns.org comes in because this section seems really emphatic about discussing how great pop-up stores are for local communities. Yes, there's plenty to like and appreciate about a temporary shop that provides an opportunity for entrepreneurs to sell I'd like to read, because I think it's awesome. Yes, there's plenty to like and appreciate about a temporary shop that provides an opportunity for entrepreneurs to sell their wares and activates an empty space. Yeah, that was definitely from strong down stuff.

So back to Spirit Halloween, because yes, there's other seasonal pop-up stores, but this is the seasonal pop-up store we're talking about. It was founded about 40 years ago in the early 80s by a guy named Joe Marver. And he didn't start out selling Halloween stuff, he started out selling reasonably priced women's apparel. Yeah, the store was called Just Spirit.

Ooh. Women's discount apparel, it was a little wordy. As the story goes, he was working in that store, or, you know, owning that store and working there, I guess, in October, looked across the street, and there was a Halloween costume shop that was killing it. And he was just like, nobody's buying

my discounted women's apparel. Everyone's buying these Halloween costumes. Look at this dress with these shoulder pads. You could turn this down. It's almost a costume in itself. And he was like, all right, I'm struggling here. They seem to be on to something. Eventually that, like that's where the seed is planted.

Eventually that costume shop moves locations. And then Joe sees his opportunity and is like, nuts to these dresses. They're going in storage, October's approaching fast, and I'm gonna sell Halloween stuff. And he sells through the roof and is like, I'm onto something here.

So yes, he has the best October he's ever had. Like you said, he thinks he's onto something. So the next year he does it again, but this time, rather than put all those dresses in storage, he leases a temporary space. So you're starting to see like the contours of Spirit Halloween forming at the edges here. And in 30 days, he sells $100,000.

I'm assuming early 80s $100,000. Yeah, it was. Worth of Halloween stuff in just, again, 30 days. And he was like, I'm definitely onto something here. I'm gonna go all in on this Halloween thing and sure, I'll sell some dresses during the rest of the year, but this Halloween thing is really a big deal to me now. Yeah, and this is a quote that I've actually seen

from Joe Marber that I still can't make sense of. I didn't invent temporary sales, but I feel like I invented temporary Halloween. I don't understand that, because what is permanent Halloween? Yeah, Halloween had been like a 12 month out of the year tradition until Joe Marver came along, right? I guess so.

So that's just sort of a funny quote. He seems like that kind of guy. So I say we take a break and we'll come back and talk about how the thing grew from that one that one empty store to would you say On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with, his father

in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story,

as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Bo. Hey, Matt. Are you ready to tell the readers about the extra special episode we have coming up? Training is boring. I see. So, but you can do that kind of spooky scary.

Well, yeah, but it's also because it's a ride. Yeah, I know. You can go up and down on it. But you're in it, you know? Yeah, exactly. You're in the spook. I think we have to let them in on our little surprise. Yeah, if you haven't already figured it out,

can't believe this, Mariah Carey will be joining us this week. I say, oh, I wanna go work with such and such from across town. Yeah, across town. My girl across town. Yeah, across town. I know a guy across town. Yeah, from across town. My girl across town. Yeah, across town.

I know a guy across town. I know a guy. Readers, publicists, Katie's, and finalists, tune in to maybe the most unforgettable episode of Lost Cultures this year. There's one more question, which I promised myself I would ask. Can you drop that grunge album?

I'm so mad that I haven't done that yet. But you don't have to be mad because you're in control. I am, but who do I drop it with? So should we start a label? Maybe. Wow. Listen to Las Colteristas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so Joe Marber is crushing it over the next 15 years. He grows to about 60 pop-ups. This is roughly 97, 98 or so. And the name of the store is officially Spirit Halloween by that point, it changed along the way.

And he said, you know, one of the big keys to his growth plan is presence, like billboards and stuff like that, ads, getting, like you mentioned, maybe up to a 10,000 square foot storefront, hopefully close to another big anchor store like a Walmart or a Target or something like that, or maybe a popular shopping center. And then to expand, the other key was to expand beyond just costumes, so you can get like anything Halloween in there.

Decorations are a big, big part of what they sell. Yeah, you want a plastic battle axe to use for your LARPing during the rest of the year? You go to Spirit Halloween here in the United States. That's right, but you better do it between August and November. Yeah, it's crazy that they even open in early August, but I guess that's true, even though it turns out

that they do most of their business the last two weeks of October, which, duh. I can't remember, there was a Simpsons episode that where somebody invested in pumpkin futures and that they paid off in like November. I can't remember who that happened to. I wanna say Principal Skinner, but that doesn't sound right. That's funny.

So it turns out that Joe Marver doesn't own Spirit Halloween anymore. He founded it, but he also sold it in 1999. He was probably worried about the Y2K bug and he's like, this is your problem now. He sold it to Spencer's Gifts, which makes a lot of sense now that I hear it. I believe Spencer's is still around. I think it's gone more toward like a journey

or a Pacific Coast kind of place. Whereas before it was this weird mashup of everything sexy, bongy, grateful daddy, like the weird plasma ball that you touch and the electricity goes to your hand, but somehow it doesn't electrocute you. Like all of that stuff was in Spencer's Gifts. It was the place to go in the mall

when you were 10 years old in the 80s. Oh, you bet. Especially if you were a young Baptist kid, because you could be like, hey mom, I'm gonna go over here to look at posters. And the posters were probably women in bikinis on a Lamborghini. There was also the Furboatn section, remember that one,

that had all manner of bedroom toys. Yeah, like legit ones, not just like gag gifs. No, like the heavy hitters. Right. There was actually one called the heavy hitter. There probably was. But yeah, if you were in the wrong part of Spencer Gifts when you were a 10 or 12 year old, it was a very embarrassing thing for me, but very titillating as well at the same time. So anyway, legendary 80s store.

As the legend has it, they were, Joe Marver was at a trade show in Manhattan, the executive from Spencer Giff says, come with me, get some in a limo, take some to Spencer headquarters in New Jersey, cuts him a big check. It's an undisclosed amount, could not find out how much, but it had to have been a lot of money, because in 2013, this is 11 years ago, half of Spencer Giff's yearly earnings, which was about 250 million back then, came from Spirit Halloween.

I guarantee you, it's way, way more than that now. Yeah, for sure. So just to kind of get back into the nuts and bolts, they hire about 25,000 temporary employees, just for the August to the end of October. The stores officially close on November 2nd. Little known fact, Spirit Halloween is a 12-month-a-year business online. Yeah, of course. It's just as retail stores aren't open during that time. And even before they close toward Halloween,

they're starting to plan for next year. Um, and they start like looking for retail spaces to take over. They start negotiating with landlords. They hire a bunch of district managers who manage about three to four stores each. And they get to go to New Jersey on a big trip for a week long training seminar. Uh, and then by the time August rolls around again, they're doing it again for the couple of months before Halloween.

Yeah, they're senior director, at least at the time of this writing, they're senior director of real estate, it's got name Frank Pacera. And can you imagine how hard that job is to open up 1500 and negotiate those leases, 1,500 temporary stores, just on the real estate side. Like forget training all those employees.

There's a pretty fun article, if anyone feels like reading more about Spirit Halloween on Slate I think, written by an employee who was one of those managers. And it wasn't like some horror story, like oh god, it was awful, it was more just like, it's a crazy experience because everything is moving so fast and there's so much inventory and none of these employees, like, everyone is temporary so it's just a crazy,

but fun environment it seems like to work in. Yeah, man, I'll bet keeping things stocked is like sacrosanct there because you got to get rid of as much as possible. Although they do say about 30 to 40 percent of it carries over from year to year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure they lost their shirts on Justin Bieber costumes one year. Right.

And that probably happens, but you know, you're always going to make the money on Michael Myers stuff, right? Yeah, for sure. You got a Halloween costume together for this year? Are you going to do anything? I don't know. Uh, Yumi usually comes up with those. I just go along with them because they're always brilliant and I can't think of anything, so I'm not sure what she's got up her sleeves this year, probably

something really good. I gotcha. Nice. Um, so there's one other thing we should talk about from Spirit Halloween that you dug up is they are really into charity for children's hospitals. And it's pretty awesome what they do. Yeah, they partnered. I mean, essentially what they're trying to do is bring, you know, not the spirit of Christmas

to children's hospitals, but the spirit of Halloween to make hospitals less scary in an ironic twist. Yeah, for sure. It's called Spirit of Children. You can donate online to it. You can donate in the store. You can donate as little as a dollar and they'll say thank you. But they, not just Halloween.

So around Halloween, these about 150 children's hospitals get care packages with costumes and decorations and all that stuff, because think about it, when you're a little kid, you're sick in the hospital missing Halloween, that sucks, on top of having to be in the hospital in the first place course. But for the rest of the year, they support programs,

they pay for equipment, like they cover these children's hospitals, and it's pretty cool, it's a really great program. I had no idea about it. But if you go to Spirit Halloween this year, maybe drop a buck in their Spirit of Children collection thing or go online and donate. But the great thing about it is 100% of those donations go to this program.

That's right. And we've been singing the praises of this fun store. I hope it's not exposed to some awful thing because it seems to be what it is, which is just a pretty successful fun store supporting a fun holiday. And I hope they're not advertising on the podcast right now because if so, it's a coincidence, everybody.

We weren't paid to do this. Are you kidding me? They totally should. We should tell sales about this. Okay. Well then, Chuck brought this on. It's okay. I don't think we have anything else about Spirit Halloween, right? Nope.

All right. Well then Short Stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRad app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.