Scaring Up Profits
A behind-the-scenes look at how local entrepreneurs are getting their share of the $3 billion dollar Halloween industry.

By Ellen Jensen

Remember when Halloween was simple? You dressed up in homemade costumes as miniature witches, ghosts or hobos and tottered around the neighborhood with your friends, looking for the houses with the best candy. When you were older, you may have gone to a haunted house, but they were usually amateur affairs put on as fundraisers by local youth organizations.

Times have changed. Consumers spend more than $3 billion on Halloween, according to the National Retail Federation.

Halloween also is one of the biggest decorating holidays of the year, second only to Christmas. Craft and grocery stores do their part by putting out Halloween candy and merchandise as early as August. According to a 2005 survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, 52.5 percent of consumers planned to celebrate Halloween, with the average person spending $48.48 on merchandise.

Halloween has become an industry that encompasses not only sophisticated haunted houses and costume shops, but also elaborate pumpkin patches that celebrate Halloween's roots-the fall harvest.
 
Seasonal Rush
For these seasonal businesses, autumn's approach means their window of opportunity is about to open, and it's time to go into overdrive. Full Moon Productions, which owns The Beast and The Edge of Hell haunted houses, adds to its six full-time staff approximately 250 part-timers for a cast of 100-125 actors. They have to hire that many to work around inevitable scheduling conflicts and cover all the parts, said Amber Arnett Bequeaith, vice president and co-owner of the 32-year-old family business.

"Trying to gear up for that one window is difficult," said Carolyn Raasch, who owns Carolyn's Country Cousins Pumpkin Patch with her husband, Buddy. The Liberty, Mo.-based pumpkin patch started in 1991 and opens the third weekend in September through the end of October. Raasch said business starts off slow, then it's mass chaos for a couple of weekends before it slows down again.

Halloween is serious business for Lawrence-based Fun and Games. October provides from 45 to 50 percent of yearly sales for the costume and novelty shop. Owner Kyle Billings said it's important to stay one step ahead, "or you're sunk."

Business at Dottie Mae's Costumes starts picking up the first week of October, but the main rush is during the last 10 days of the month, said Dottie Mae Groves, who owns the Kansas City, Mo., shop with her husband, Harold. She said they, too, do as much business in September and October as they do during the rest of the year. On Halloween, Dottie Mae's serves from 1,200 to1,500 customers, and 400 to 600 customers a day the previous 10 days.

"There will be a few days when we have as many as 15 employees in the shop, then there well be a few days we need 15 and we don't have them," Groves said.

Rain, Snow, Sleet, Heat
If it rains one weekend, business will be slow and Raasch will send some of the employees home. But if it's sunny the next day, they'll get slammed, and the farm will be wall to wall people.

"You can't help that," Raasch said. "You just have to take what happens with a smile and make do."

October has a tendency to be cold, especially for school tours, and she also hosts a lot of special needs groups. She said early in the season, the weather is usually nicer and they can give the tours more time.

Christine Loneman, owner of Faulkner's Pumpkin Farm, said they live and die by the weather. On a good weather weekend, they can have anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 guests.

They also host many school tours. If the weather conditions are dangerous or extremely unbearable, Loneman offers a rain plan. A scarecrow visits the school, reads the children a story, passes out pumpkins and gives them passes to come to the farm another day.

"It saves the day for the teachers," Loneman said.

Weather also can spook customers away from haunted houses. If September is hot, people are still out boating and barbecuing, not thinking about haunted houses. And if the fall is rainy, cold or snowy, customers tend to stay away as well, Bequeaith said.

"When you are a seasonal business and competing for the entertainment dollar, each year determines what you are able to invest in the production for next year," Bequeaith said. "If we have a bad weather weekend with torrential downpours or snow, we don't have the whole year to make that up-it's a lost weekend."

Off Season
Bequeaith said it's important to create new things for people to see, but her family also has to make sure they can sustain the business. She said for many years, they took other jobs during the off-season, and it's only been in the last couple of years that they have had a full-time staff. They also supplement their income with some commercial leases that have allowed them to make their dream a full-time business.

Faulkner's Pumpkin Farm is where Loneman grew up and where her parents live today. Her parents operate Benjamin Ranch, and Loneman works for them full time as event coordinator, except for the two months out of the year when she runs the pumpkin farm. Around Labor Day, she starts putting the farm together.

"I have been booking educational tours and scheduling special events since mid-spring, so it never completely gets put away," Loneman said. "But it is a seasonal, quick business that we put together in about two weeks; and then if you drove by the day after we close, it looks like we were never there."

Although Fun and Games does most of its business in the fall, its costume sales-for plays, schools theater productions and elementary school projects-during the rest of the year also make up a significant portion of their business, along with the sale of toys and games.

The off-season also is the time for planning. In November and early December, the Full Moon staff cleans up the buildings and preps them for winter. They take a holiday break and then come back at the first of the year to plan scene and costume changes and additions for the next season. Because of the magnitude of some of the haunted house scenes-the werewolf forest in the Beast, for example, is 10,000 square feet-it sometimes takes two to three years to develop them to full capacity, Bequeaith said.

"We may level a scene one year to change it and make it better," she said

Each year, Carolyn's Country Cousins Pumpkin Patch adds at least one new attraction so throughout the winter, spring and summer, they are busy developing and building on those new ideas.

"The season only lasts six weeks, but it takes all year to prepare," Raasch said.

Something New
This year Carolyn's added rubber duck races using four troughs and a pump to keep the water moving. They also expanded the educational opportunities for older children with Uncle Earl's mining camp. Children purchase mining rights and receive a bucket of sand and rocks and an identification card. Then they pan for gemstones and rocks in the sluice.

Another year the Raasches added a replica 1863 C.P. Huntington steam train that takes children around a half-mile track. Three years ago, the Raasch sons, Errie and Bernie, started a sister operation, the Liberty Corn Maze, which is three mazes in one, varying in length and difficulty. They change the design each year, and this year is a tribute to the Kansas City Royals.

Finding another way to bring its theatrical roots to the consumer, Full Moon Productions recently launched a retail costume outlet at www.fullmooncostumeshop.com. The online shop carries Hollywood-style Halloween costumes and accessories for adults, children and pets.

Both Fun and Games and Dottie Mae's continually try to keep up with the latest trends in costumes. Fun and Games recently moved to a larger location in the Antique Mall in downtown Lawrence, which allowed Billings to carry a wider selection of costumes and to display them more effectively. He has expanded his Halloween presence and decreased the range of toys and games he offers.

Dottie Mae's Groves said the disco look is in again, so she has ordered go-go boots in a wider array of colors, and she has almost doubled the kinds of gloves she carries-different colors, length and texture, as well as fingerless. She also increased the variety of knee-highs and tights, and is always on the lookout for more colorful costumes. She said the key is to buy enough merchandise to cover your sales goals.

"You can't sell it if you don't have it," Groves said.

What to Order?
Costume shops have to place their Halloween orders in March, long before the season kicks into gear, so knowing what to order is difficult. Groves and Billings both use their past experience as a guide. They also listen to customers throughout the year as they talk about Halloween plans.

Billings said movies often dictate what people want, but it's difficult to know which ones are going to be popular that far out. Groves sometimes orders based on what sold well the previous year, but that doesn't always work, either. She said one year French maid outfits sold like hotcakes, but the next year, they sat and gathered dust.

She said sexy costumes are in, such as "PG-13" versions of storybook characters such as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, Little Red Riding Hood and Little Bo Peep.

"It's half a guessing game and half experience from previous years," Billings said. "Some of the stuff the companies come out with is ridiculous, so you know they have no clue what the public wants. But sometimes it's a no brainer and you think, 'That's brilliant.'"

Logistics
Seasonal businesses also experience many logistical challenges.

"Believe it or not, growing pumpkins is our biggest challenge because our location is infested with deer," Loneman said.

At any given time, there could be 20 to 50 deer on their 40 acres, she said. And this year, the drought has done as much damage as the deer.

"We found that we can truck them in for cheaper than we can grow them," Loneman said. "We bring pumpkins in to supplement what we can grow."

The Beast haunted house uses an open format, which means the customers are free to roam and are within every scene, Bequeaith said. This also means that the scenes are constantly in repair. Also, each person scares differently, so the staff has to write a program in the best way they can to make sure each scene happens for every person. If the timing is off, the scene is not as effective, Bequeaith said.

Any time you deal with the public, you have to be safety conscious. As the Raasches develop new activities, they critique them repeatedly to make sure there are no safety hazards.

"We think about safety when designing everything," Raasch said.

Faulkner's Pumpkin Farm has a daily safety checklist for its tractor hayride, which includes wheels, brakes, bearings, diesel, fluids and sides on wagons, Loneman said. She added that any time you integrate with animals, you have to follow guidelines. She attends seminars throughout the year on animal safety and sanitation and has made modifications based on information she has learned.

Loneman and her staff also continually survey the area, checking all safety ties on signage and checking for holes in the fields. In addition, she cautions employees to be vigilant, and teaches them the process for handling an incident, should one occur.

Full Moon Productions spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on safety before they create one scene, Bequeaith said. They have cameras throughout their haunted houses. They also have state-of-the-art fire escapes and sprinkler systems, and policemen and firemen are on duty when they are open.

"This business is harder than most people think," she said. "There are a lot of expenses behind the scenes that people don't see."

The onset of computer animation over the past 10 years has allowed Full Moon Productions to create a much more sophisticated production, but the technology creates its own set of challenges. When customers walk into a scene, they break a laser beam, and the scene comes to life. Technicians have to figure out how long it takes the average person to get to certain point in the scene so they can coordinate the sound and other special effects.

Full Moon Productions has a live feed on the Internet, so people can watch their friends and family go through the haunted houses. They also have a full viewing room, so customers can watch others interact with the scenes.
 
Tradition
Visiting Carolyn's Country Cousins Pumpkin Patch has become a family tradition for many families, Raasch said. Some families have been coming for more than 14 years to see what's new each year.

"There are people bringing their grandkids when they used to bring their own kids," Raasch said.

Traditions can be powerful. One woman flew her whole wedding party from Russia to get married at The Beast, because going to the haunted houses was a family tradition when she lived in Kansas City, Bequeaith said. And one of Full Moon production's oldest customers celebrated her 80th birthday at the Edge of Hell.

"We are about scary, not gore," Bequeaith said. "We create our own characters and costumes-it's all in our imagination. It's wonderful to watch people and see them excited and know that your family created it."

Ellen Jensen is the managing editor of Kansas City Small Business Monthly magazine.