e to celebrate Halloween twice a year to showcase their love for the holiday. This summer, the Summerween hashtag went viral, with over 124.3 million TikTok posts (and counting) of people celebrating the holiday with Halloween-themed picnics and charcuterie boards, Jack-o-lanterns made out of watermelons and other hot-and-spooky activities.  The rise of Summerween only adds to the bounty that has become Halloween-related retail sales in recent years.  Data released by American bank holding company Capital One revealed that in 2022, the average American had a budget of $100.45 budget for Halloween, with about $29.51 allocated to candy. In total, Americans spent $10.6 billion for Halloween that year.  Last year, the National Retail Federation (NRF) predicted that consumers would spend approximately $108.24 per person, with a record 73 per cent of consumers planning to celebrate Halloween in 2023, up from 69 per cent in the year prior.  As Katherine Cullen, NRF’s vice president of industry and consumer insights, summed up, “The big picture is that Halloween is more popular than ever.” How are retailers jumping on the Summerween bandwagon? As Melissa Minkow, director of retail strategy at CI&T, told Inside Retail, “Seasonal and occasion-based shopping is back and exciting again now that consumers are out and about ‘post-pandemic.’ It’s nice for people to have events to look forward to, and shopping is a big part of the fun in Halloween because you’re often buying very specific items.” As older consumers return to pre-pandemic levels of autumnal Halloween celebrations and younger shoppers engage in less seasonally conventional times to celebrate this holiday, retailers need to be ready to dive into Halloween-related product drops and shopping promotions even earlier than before. Home Depot was the first major retailer to sell fall holiday decor online back in April, with the return of its 12-foot-tall skeletons, while Michaels was the first major retailer to drop its Halloween collection in stores in late June.  Bath & Body Works dropped its official 2024 Halloween collection on July 19, with a variety of cute and creepy products dubbed “Vampire blood”, “Ghoul Friend”, “Spooky Moontini” and so on.  Meanwhile, indie brands like Vixen by Micheline Pitt, a retro and horror-movie-inspired apparel and accessories brand, and Backstitch Bruja launched by entrepreneur Yvette Aragon-Herrera in 2018, offer aesthetically pleasing, Halloween-themed products year-round. Backstitch Bruja has a special section dedicated to Summerween-themed products, like a Jack-o-Melon handbag, and Vixen just launched its first Halloween collection of the summer, with several items in bright-neon green, Brat-inspired hues.   What is behind Halloween’s increasingly strong hold over consumers?  Another part of the growing appeal around Halloween-related retail is the age demographic. Many Gen Z and millennial consumers grew up with “spookier” entertainment, like “Beetlejuice” and “Scary Godmother” and with toys like Mattel’s Monster High dolls, which are inspired by classic horror, fantasy and mystery characters like Dracula and Frankenstein.  Creepy is the new cute and consumers are eager to indulge in this multi-faceted holiday year-round.  Not to mention, as Minkow pointed out, “Costumes are also being purchased for themed activities and events year-round now (think: musicians like Chappell Roan having different themes for each concert for audience members to be inspired by with their outfits), so Halloween and costume stores have become relevant beyond the one weekend of the year.” How can retailers tap into the Halloween spirit? There are many ways retailers can give consumers the chilling shopping thrills they are looking for, Minkow observed, including: establishing a content strategy that provides ongoing outfit inspiration to shoppers and centers their own assortment developing GenAI-powered tools that allow consumers to search for costume ideas based on a theme or elements they already have in their closet collaborating with local event venues to be the main source of costuming for attendees and selling limited-edition assortments relevant to a venue’s upcoming events. Retailers can also offer discounts or deals for group costumes and build out fandom chat rooms or online communities for shoppers to coordinate those group costumes and exchange ideas to strengthen their digital strategies, Minkow added. “Some retailers in this space would even be wise to start up second-hand and resale marketplaces since many of these purchases are one-time-use, which can be a tough spend for shoppers to justify,” she suggested. Another way retailers can tap into the growing demand for Halloween products is by offering seasonal merch in the fall and summer as well as December. In addition to Summerween, there is a growing interest in celebrating Halloween in a season when retailers typically focus on holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year.  For example, retailers could host “The Nightmare Before Christmas”-themed events, or produce limited-edition collections referencing this film and similarly spooky, holiday media.  Halloween is not going away anytime soon, so retailers might as well dive into the fun and offer their consumers the thrills they are looking for.