Amazon seller tips from Spirit Halloween

I thought Halloween was a couple days away.

But if you’re hanging out in a city, you might see people in costume tonight! (Oct 29)

Because it’s the “Halloweekend”, apparently.

Kids these days 😉

No joke:

I just saw someone in a full Ghost Busters uniform. Vacuum pack and everything.

Because spooky season is upon us, let’s stay on that theme.

But because we’re Amazon sellers, let’s talk about how to make money, too. 🙂

I recently saw a piece from the Wall Street Journal called:

“How Spirit Halloween Became a Titan of the $10 Billion Halloween Industry”. You can check it out here if you want. These are my thoughts on it.

Really quickly:

For those unfamiliar with Spirit, they’re pop-up physical retail locations that appear for 2 months a year (Sept & Oct), then disappear. In 2022, they opened 1450 stores in North America! A new record for them.

Their strategy: –

:🎃: acquire short-term leases in old, empty retail buildings and abandoned spaces –

:🎃: rent them only for Halloween season, they disappear (so they don’t pay rent all year) –

:🎃: put the stores EVERYWHERE so that last-minute costume shoppers can get easy access –

:🎃: put “kick out clauses” in their leases that allow landlords to kick them out if they find other long-term tenants. This innovation de-risks the deal for landlords

Questions to enhance your Amazon business:

– Spirit is riding a macro retail trend: the death of physical big box retail :skull:. Big empty spaces wouldn’t have been as available (especially for just 2 months per year!) from, say, 1995-2005. How is retail changing, and how can this benefit your business?

– if your business has strong seasonal patterns, going HARD during your on-season (in the form of increased Amazon ad spend, for example) can be the equivalent of renting out 1450 stores for 2 months a year. “Make hay while the sun shines”, as they say. Where do these patterns exist in your biz?

– Spirit sees themselves as culturally “marking” the official start of the Halloween season. “Coming to a Spirit Halloween is an event”, says the CEO. North American culture has so many product-based beliefs like: it’s not Valentine’s without chocolate; it’s not Thanksgiving without turkey; “spring cleaning” products; the Starbucks pumpkin spice latte for fall, etc. How can your products be positioned as essential/”must have” to mark a certain time of year?

– I initially thought Spirit’s busy season was September & October. But in fact, they’re just as busy during the rest of the year finding retail space for high season. What can you do in your off-season that will bolster your on-season?

For many sellers, Q4 (right now!) is the on-season, and it would be an honor to help you scale during this time. We’re actively looking for brands to help scale.

My company (AsteroidX) is made up of Amazon Advertising specialists. That’s all we do. We’ve got very reasonable prices, and focus on profitable growth. If you want to explore working together, you can book a call here: