At Party City, we know joy has the power to transform lives, and we live our purpose of inspiring that joy by making it easy to create unforgettable memories for our customers. And when we think special memories, we think of Halloween throughout our lives — from elementary school Halloween parades and trick-or-treating to coordinated group costumes to legendary Halloween parties!
Halloween is our favorite season. In fact, it’s so important to us that we start preparing for it on November 1st, leveraging proprietary consumer insights to improve our customer experience and competitive position as we reinforce our role as the celebrations category leader.
The Power of a Plan
Before all the trick-or-treating festivities have even wrapped, our strategic teams are analyzing cultural trends, insights and data, harnessing our leading seasonal knowledge to immediately apply learnings to the year ahead. We never stop thinking about how we can help our customers celebrate the Halloween season and continuously improve our product and experience, year after year.
When examining the insights from 2020, we noticed a significant increase in outdoor décor. Anticipating this trend to carry through the 2021 season, we planned ahead, ordering a deeper and broader assortment than in years past.
While there are certainly well-documented supply chain challenges impacting our business (and most within the retail sector), we have inventory this Halloween season, more than most traditional retailers, with additional shipments planned to bolster our already strong supply.
With more than 500 different popular costumes for the whole family and nearly 2,000 accessories to personalize any Halloween look, we know we’ll be able to get our customers what they need, how they need it — in store, via curbside pickup or delivered direct to home as quickly as same day. Our dedicated team is working around the clock and constantly monitoring our inventory levels to ensure Party City customers have a Halloween to remember, no matter how they choose to celebrate this year.
Customer Obsessed
One of the things the global pandemic has taught us is that although you can never predict the future, you can prepare by planning for every possible scenario. While the CDC notes it is safe to go trick-or-treating outdoors in small groups this year, we’re remaining mindful of consumer comfort levels, because in addition to using sales data and trend insights, listening to our customers is our top priority — we’re customer obsessed! In fact, we recently surveyed 1,400 decision-making moms across the country to reveal their family’s attitudes and plans surrounding the upcoming holiday. Results indicate that 80 percent of those surveyed consider Halloween to be a season, and nearly half say that it begins October 1st. We couldn’t agree more!
Last year, we pivoted rapidly to help our customers celebrate safely and this dedication to making it as easy as possible for them to create unforgettable memories remains at our core. We built on the foundation of our omni-channel experience to quickly set up curbside pick-up so that customers could collect their costumes, candy and décor orders, contact-free. We expect many customers will continue to take advantage of this service as well as our expanded delivery options, while others will return to their local Party City or Halloween City store for the first time in over a year, shopping with their families in person for all of their spooky seasonal needs.
Looking Ahead
Our customers are craving true Halloween celebrations, and so are we! We’ve felt the pent-up anticipation — and demand! — for parties as consumers ‘re-do’ missed milestone events.
New celebration trends are emerging this year with the hybrid event taking center stage. Our sales data shows that shoppers are buying party favors and décor to entertain guests at their homes, while also packaging up the same items to send to loved ones joining the party virtually.
We’ve also identified new trends in the costume category. This Halloween season, our customers are gravitating towards get-ups that have a pop-culture tie. Whether that be characters from newly released movies or ensembles that give a nod to 90s and 2000s nostalgia — we’ve got you covered.
Winning Halloween means delivering a seamless celebration experience. By helping our customers ‘You Boo You’ — our fun play on ‘you do you’ — we ensure we make it easy to create more memories of those Halloween parades, group costumes and epic parties to look back on for years to come.
About Julie Roehm: Julie is a marketing and branding connoisseur. Experienced in various industries, Julie prides herself on her creative strategizing skills. She is passionate about transforming organizations from the inside out. As a leader, she holds audacious visions that will inspire people and allows them feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. An entrepreneur, Julie founded and ran a marketing consulting firm providing expertise in all facets of business strategy and marketing execution. Her well-rounded expertise has led her to her positions today, as an independent board director and the Chief Marketing & Experience Officer at Party City.
