A family leaves a Spirit Halloween store located in a former Best Buy.
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Some Spirit Halloween locations will be occupied longer than usual this year.
Spirit Halloween will operate 10 stores under the name “Spirit Christmas” throughout the holiday season, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC.
Instead of the company's usual strategy of only renting abandoned storefronts long enough to house the Halloween-specific retailer, 10 stores will open in the Northeast through the end of the year. The company's flagship store in Mays Landing, N.J., will open Oct. 18, while the other nine locations will open in early November, the spokesperson said. Not all stores will be converted from existing Spirit Halloween locations.
“Spirit Christmas is a new concept for us and we hope it will resonate with our customers,” a spokesperson for Spirit Halloween told CNBC. “Our goal is to create a festive shopping experience that captures the spirit of the season, just like we do at Halloween.”
Every store has inflatables and holiday decorations, but not all will have the same experiences. Not only will the new stores replace fake skulls and costumes with wrapping paper and stockings, they will also host activities such as taking photos with a real Santa Claus and writing letters to the North Pole.
The first ten locations will serve as a test to see if customers remain invested during the holiday season.
Holiday sales are a lucrative market, but not a certainty for the company. Spending rose 3.8% year over year to $964.4 billion in 2023, according to the National Retail Federation.
Deloitte estimates that holiday retail sales will increase 2.3% to 3.3% in 2024, but expects a higher increase of 7% to 9% for e-commerce, which the Spirit Christmas test stores will not support. Amazon is already gearing up for the holidays and plans to hire 250,000 workers for this season, the same number as last year.
Holiday spending could also be affected by a tense presidential election in November and a historically tumultuous hurricane season.