Tag: hand

Scott Morris, the co-owner of Morris Costumes in Charlotte, NC, has slept in the office for the past 50 days – but he’s not complaining.

His company, which distributes Halloween costumes and backdrops and operates the Halloween Express channel, has struggled to meet demand for the holidays that earlier this year seemed not to be happening as usual. Retailers who typically place orders between May and July largely resisted, worried about whether people would dress up and go out during a pandemic.

“Then they all woke up in early August and said, ‘Oh my God, Halloween is going to happen,’” Morris said last week in an interview.

So began a mad race for a surprisingly robust company this year – with some twists and turns. Coronavirus-related costumes such as hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes and artwork of the virus itself have exploded, Mr Morris said. People also dress in rolls of toilet paper to nod to the obsessive storage of the item during the first months of the pandemic. With the rise of e-commerce, Morris Costumes is sending up to 30,000 packages per day.

There are fewer costumes related to recent films, however, given that Hollywood is mostly on hiatus. And despite the internet’s enthusiasm for a “sexy hand sanitizer” costume, Morris said the “sexy costume category” had perhaps had the most trouble this unusual year.

“Most of these are worn by academics who frequent the bars, and I think a lot of the bars are going to be closed,” he said.

The outlook for Halloween was as bleak as a grim reaper at the start of the pandemic, with companies like Hershey cutting back on candy wrappers tied to treats and some pop-up retailers for spooky merchandise waiting to secure physical spaces. But over the past two months, many Americans have descended into fictitious fear in an overly terrifying year. They’re embarking on decorations like inflatable witches and hanging skeletons as part of a larger spending blitz on household items, and they take on costumes as they look to celebrate Halloween in a safe way, with many considering it. like a last hurray in the open air before the descent of winter. .

“Halloween is turning out to be the last potential holiday people can celebrate, either outside under a patio with heat lamps, or making candy or treats, before Thanksgiving hits,” Robert said. Berman, Managing Director of Rasta Imposta, a costume seller. “The whole family comes into the spirit because everyone keeps saying that we need Halloween, that we need something for the kids,” added Mr. Berman, who is closely involved with the Halloween & Costume Association business group.

The National Retail Federation, an industry group, expected Halloween consumer spending to hit about $ 8 billion this year, down from $ 8.8 billion last year, due to fewer Halloween parties, sleight of hand and haunted house calls. But the enthusiasm around the costumes and decorations persisted.

“We’ve sold more decorations, more animated props than we’ve ever had in our business history,” said Morris, who owns the business with his sister Terri. Bate. People “dress the house a lot more,” he says.

Even people who refrain from cheating or treating are wearing new outfits, often for Facebook and Instagram, said Mr Berman, whose sales have also increased. He compared this year’s quest for light costumes to Halloween after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. While some customers have avoided costumes that depict images of the coronavirus itself, people have adopted outfits that, he says, reflect “the culture of what we are facing now.”

“They do fun things like the bottle of disinfectant or the disinfectant,” Berman said. “People are going to be toilet paper – you can either be a full roll of toilet paper or the brown cardboard tube with a small piece of toilet paper stuck to it.” He shared a photo of a group costume involving both outfits with a third person dressed as feces.

Still, the popularity of the costumes linked to Covid-19 is somewhat inadvertent.

“The challenge with the costumes is that it’s kind of like the stock market in that you have to buy the product six, eight months before the holidays,” Morris said. “You really don’t know what’s going to sell, you just say ‘yes’. Hand sanitizer – thought that would be OK, but we’re absolutely exhausted.

While traditional Halloween costumes like witches, ghosts, and Disney princesses still sell out, many Americans are buying and making house versions of costumes that reflect 2020.

Jen Dibert, 43, from Silverdale, Washington, has been handcrafting her daughter’s Halloween costume every year for more than two decades. But as the holidays approach this year, Ms Dibert and her daughter Savannah, 26, struggled to find a costume that would suit such a strange and tumultuous time.

Then the idea came to Ms. Dibert.

“This year has been a real mess,” she said. “Why not get dressed in 2020?”

Savannah will wear a placemat around her neck to symbolize the passing of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg and don a “Make America Great Again” cap as a nod to the upcoming election. She will wear a mule wig, mustache and plastic tiger to portray the hit Netflix show “Tiger King.”

Additional touches include a giant papier-mâché murder hornet on his back and felt sticks and flames on his boots to represent the wildfires on the West Coast. And to symbolize the pandemic, she’ll wear a mask under her chin and carry a grocery basket filled to the brim with – what else? – rolls of toilet paper.

She will wear the outfit to a Halloween party at a popular local bar, where she hopes to win the costume contest.

Ms Dibert, who doesn’t wear a mask in public because she says she doesn’t believe the government has a right to tell people what to do, hopes the party will give her daughter a chance to enjoy a night of pleasure after so much. months of being locked inside.

“I hope it’s like it’s another Halloween and nothing is different on this day unlike the rest of this year,” Ms. Dibert said. “I just want her to feel normal and have fun.”

While Mr. Berman, like many other business owners, praised Halloween sales volume given the uncertainty of the timing, he noted that before the pandemic, 2020 was on the verge of be a boon to the holiday and party industry.

“This would be the year Valentine’s Day fell on a Friday, Cinco de Mayo came across ‘Taco Tuesday’, July 4th was a weekend,” Mr. Berman said, adding: “Halloween was a Saturday , summer day. and a blue moon. So it was that crazy perfect Saturday and Halloween, then Christmas and New Year’s Day also fell on Fridays or Saturdays. It was the perfect, perfect, perfect storm for the party industry.

He added: “2020 should have been the best year ever and it turned out a little different. So are the products selling and things better than they could have been? Yes. Could it have been better if Covid had not happened? Yes.”