‘There’s nothing temporary about a temporary store’: How Spirit Halloween’s CEO took it from 130 stores to 1,550—and swallowed your mall’s Hot Topic
Source: Fortune ·
Steven Silverstein built Spirit Halloween into a 1,550-store giant with vacant buildings, returning workers and a show borrowed from Bloomingdale’s.
From the source
Every year after Halloween, Spirit Halloween’s stores empty out and the signs come down. To shoppers, the chain disappears, until next September or so, when another store pops up somewhere in the neighborhood. But to Steven Silverstein, it never closes. “There’s nothing temporary about a temporary store,” Silverstein, CEO of Spencer Spirit Holdings, told Fortune. “We are 24/7, 365 Halloween, and you just don’t see it.” Its stores open for eight to 10 weeks a year, but planning for next Halloween starts before this year’s doors close. The rest of the year goes to signing leases, making and shipping millions of costumes, and lining up tens of thousands of seasonal workers. When Silverstein joined parent company Spencer’s in 2003, there were only 130 Spirit stores nationwide. Now, there are roughly 1,600 locations a year. Moody’s estimated that Spencer’s and Spirit together made about $1.9 billion in 2023, and Spirit’s two-months of operations brings in more than Spencer’s. This year,…
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