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Halloween means brisk business for holiday-specific stores

Oct 29, 2013 | 7:12 AM

Halloween is just days away, but Reginans have been hunting for the perfect costume for weeks already.

The spirit of Halloween has filled the Queen City since pop-up stores like Spirit Halloween and Halloween Alley opened back in September.

“Halloween is actually a really big business. It's second now only to Christmas,” said Tyler Payne, owner of Halloween Alley. “The average Canadian family has about $70 to $80 to spend on their Halloween costume,” Payne continued, saying he sees thousands of customers come through his store doing just that.

Spirit Halloween is marking its fourth year in Regina. Owner Gerald Lemcke agrees Regina brings a steady flow of customers, though he says it's not surprising considering his store is one of 1,000 Spirit Halloweens in the world.

Both centres are seeing steady sales of some particular children's costumes, including characters from the Despicable Me movie and the video game Minecraft.

The top seller to young girls is from the TV cartoon Monster High.

“Monster High is all the original monster characters—Dracula, Frankenstein—and it's all about their daughters who are now friends and hanging out together,” Lemcke explained. Payne admitted he had to look up what the show was when he was first asked about the costumes. But that's par for the course; both men agreed it's part of their jobs to stay on top of the latest fads and pop culture.

“The most popular that I've seen tried on (for women) are the cops and the firefighters, the flight attendents and the flapper girls,” said Brynn Colby, who works at Halloween Alley. Most of those costumes provide a tight fit and use little fabric. Both stores carried a large variety of what is described as “sexy” costumes but Payne argues its not a direction everyone wants to go in.

“We had the actual replica costume from the original Wizard of Oz. A nice, wholesome, cute Dorothy costume. We sold out of those quite readily. So we have people coming in looking for that and unfortunately all that we have left to offer is the 'sexy' version of Dorothy.”

CJME has found the top-requested costumes in Regina are:

Young Girls – Monster High, Despicable Me, Disney Princesses
Young Boys – Despicable Me, Minecraft, Adventure Time
Adult women – sexy superheroes, nurses, cops, fire fighters
Adult Men – Teletubbies, Morphsuits

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