Retailers deceive consumers with earlier Halloween start

New York (CNN) — The dog days of summer are traditionally the best time for retailers to stock their shelves with binders, lunch boxes and backpacks, but suddenly these items are sharing space with skeletons, witches and ghosts.

Directly following on from last year’s Summer Christmas, welcome to Summerween.

At many major retail chains, spooky season is starting earlier than ever, and consumers can't get enough of it.

TikTok users, made popular by Disney's animated mystery television series “Gravity Falls,” are showcasing their Summerween parties with jack-o-lanterns carved from watermelons, coffin-shaped ice cream sandwiches and skeletons resting on flotation devices.

Yet all the excitement about celebrating Halloween as early as possible comes at a time when consumers are increasingly showing signs of financial stress. They are depleting their savings and taking on record credit card debt while dealing with high prices and a cooling job market. As a result, consumers are cutting back on purchases – from burgers at McDonald's to trips to Walt Disney World.

And yet, water continues to flow from the taps on Halloween, experts say, suggesting that consumers have more gas in the tank for at least some purchases.

“If retailers were worried that consumers were about to dry up, the last thing they would do is buy a bunch of giant pumpkins,” says Laura Champine, senior consumer analyst at Loop Capital Markets. If that were the case, more retailers would sell consumer goods like garbage bags, cleaning supplies and lightbulbs, she says.

At the same time, the early Halloween offensive could be part of a strategy to attract more shoppers, along the lines of: “If they're not spending money in one area, maybe they'll spend money here,” says Joe Feldman, a senior retail analyst at Telsey Advisory Group.

And so far this year – whether it's Valentine's Day, Mother's Day or the Fourth of July – seasonal goods have been “the only area where people have indulged in some luxury items,” he told CNN.

Encourage consumers to treat themselves more

“It's clear that consumers have been interested in buying Halloween products earlier and earlier,” Champine said. A Costco store she visited in Los Angeles began testing some Halloween items around March. In April, she visited a Costco store in New York and saw the same products. “They just introduced them because they were selling well.” (Costco did not respond to CNN's request for comment.)

Michaels said sales of Halloween items began in June, the earliest the retailer has ever done so.

“Consumer demand drives the launch of our seasonal collections, and this year it came earlier than ever before for Halloween,” John Gehre, chief merchandising officer at Michaels, said in a statement provided to CNN. The first launch of Halloween items at Michaels “consistently exceeded our internal expectations,” he added.

This underscores that while consumers may want to limit their spending, “in the specific moment, such as when Halloween products hit the market early, they may spend money instead,” says Kelsey Robinson, senior partner at McKinsey.

Lance Allen, Home Depot's chief merchandiser for holiday decor, said the retailer has started selling Halloween items online in April for the past two years “due to high demand.” However, stores will not begin offering Halloween items until around Labor Day “to ensure consistency year after year,” Allen said.

The spooky holiday, a bright spot for home improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowe's, comes after they struggled significantly in recent years following the Covid renovation boom, when more people were buying homes. Now that mortgage rates and home prices have risen, fewer people are moving. That's leading to lower sales.

As a result, these retailers are even more concerned about having unsold Halloween items in November that they will have to offer at a lower price, Champine told CNN. By selling Halloween items earlier, they likely hope they will have to discount less, she added. Home Depot said its Halloween strategy has “remained the same over the past few years.” Lowe's declined to comment beyond sharing Google search data for “Halloween.”

But just because consumers are increasingly taking the opportunity to start Halloween shopping earlier doesn't mean it will stay that way forever, Feldman says.

“At some point it could bounce back again.”

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