Halloween is expected to scare up record sales this year as more adults -- and pets -- join in what was once mainly a children's dress-up event, filling a void before the key Christmas shopping season.
After four months of sluggish retail trade and lackluster back-to-school sales, shops are decorating windows with witches, skeletons and pumpkin lanterns ahead of Oct. 31, when Americans don masks, throw costume parties and go door-to-door asking for treats.
The National Retail Federation (NRF), the largest U.S. retail trade group, said its 2004 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey estimated a record $3.12 billion would be spent on Halloween this year, up from $2.96 billion last year.
"Halloween has become a seasonal event, not just a one-night party, and this is creating a nice chunk of cash in the void between the back-to-school period and Christmas," NRF Vice President Scott Krugman said.
"There's always been candy and costumes, but it's really decorations driving sales now with people turning their homes into haunted houses for the whole month of October," he said.
While $3 billion is a blip for mega retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., whose annual sales hit $256 billion, even big players are stocking larger selections of Halloween goods.
Wal-Mart declined to comment on its outlook for Halloween, but said it recognized the importance of the event to its customers and has updated its merchandise to meet demand.
With Halloween now the second most popular holiday for decking out homes, the appropriate decorations are a hot ticket.
"We have for Halloween this year stocked 8-foot inflation yard decorations," a Wal-Mart spokesperson said.
Toys R Us Inc.,the No. 2 toy retailer after Wal-Mart, said it stocked a wide range of costumes, candy and books for Halloween without giving sales projections, while the nation's largest chocolate maker, Hershey Foods Corp., declined to comment on its forecast for sales this month.
Smaller players, however, were more open about Halloween trade, with Party City Corp., the largest party goods chain in the United States, seeing strong growth. Halloween accounted for 25 percent of its sales last year, a rise of 13.9 percent from Halloween 2002.
"Halloween has clearly become very significant," a spokesman for Party City said.
Halloween now ranks as the No. 6 spending holiday in the United States after the winter holidays, which pull in an estimated $219.9 billion.
The NRF survey found the average consumer will spend $43.57 on Halloween this year with sweets accounting for $14.83.
The largest portion of the total will be spent on costumes, with Spider-Man outfits, frilly princess dresses and witches' robes and peaked hats topping the favorites list for children this year.
Retailers have increasingly found that Halloween, whose traditions were brought to America in the 1840s by Irish immigrants, is appealing to a wider audience, not just pint-sized ghosts making the neighborhood rounds with trick-or-treat bags.
A survey by Shopping in America, conducted for The Macerich Co., found 59 percent of Americans expected to join in some type of Halloween activity, spending an average $49.27 each, with many shoppers predicting a President Bush mask to be the biggest seller for adults in this election year.
But costumes are not limited to adults and children. They are also in demand for pets, with both of the top U.S. pet supply chains, Petsmart Inc. and Petco Animal Supplies Inc. offering a variety of choices.
Both company Web sites feature a gallery of dog outfits, with a basset hound dressed as a devil, a Pug dog in a hula skirt and a Jack Russell clad as Dracula.
