A defunct Circuit City finds new life as a Halloween pop-up store
Seasonal Halloween stores flourish in empty strip malls and abandoned big-box stores
In the early 1980s, Joseph Marver had a problem. The San Francisco-based dress retailer couldn’t for the life of him convince anyone to buy his dresses. But he did see that many of his potential customers were passing up his store to go to a nearby costume shop.
That shop eventually gave Marver an idea that would change the way we celebrate a major holiday for good. According to a Newhouse News Service piece from 2000, Marver put his dresses away for a month, and started selling costumes of his own. Sales went through the roof, of course.
The next year, he ditched his dress store and put up a display in a mall, and had even more sales success. Soon enough, he was running with the Halloween store concept all along the West Coast.
Other retailers quickly caught on to the same concept, but it was Marver’s chain known as Spirit Halloween, that proved the most unusual and influential. Its phenomenal growth caught the eye of another prominent novelty retailer – Spencer Gifts – which acquired Spirit in 1999. From there, the chain—and the basic concept—exploded.
Read about how seasonal pop-up stores revolutionized the Halloween market at Atlas Obscura!