Halloween - Big Business in the UK

Our warehouse is full of spooky looking displays and POS items being picked and packed for roll outs to major supermarket chains across the UK. Ghosts and skeletons, bats and ghouls, mummies and spiders...it's all wonderfully fun and our favourite time of year receiving in these items, and sorting through them ready for installation!

Halloween, although an old festival is gaining popularity year on year as influences from across the pond make this a bigger celebration than it was when I was a child, back then it was penny for the guy and bonfire night that was the main Autumn celebration. Children did go trick or treating and have dress up parties but it's a world away from apple bobbing and homemade costumes...there just wasn't the amount of merchandise availabe then.

 

Now supermarkets dedicate their whole seasonal aisle to Halloween at this time of year and decorate with floor graphics, hanging nets and signs to display ghoulish items that are for sale on the shelves. It does seem to be quite supermarket-centric, unlike Christmas and Easter, as people spend less on Halloween items, looking for cheap sweet and food items, costumes and decorations.

 

Halloween was celebrated more in America and I think Walmart owned Asda have had a big influence on bringing big time promotion of Halloween to the UK, partnering up with brand manufacturers to offer exclusive Halloween themed confectionary items.

 

Halloween is now the third largest selling opportunity after Christmas and Easter so it's understandable that supermarkets spend so much on display items to maximise on sales - just try getting through the supermarket with your children when there's a huge fun and excitingly decorated aisle tempting them in! Reportedly worth more than £300 million to UK retailers in 2011, and with a growth forecast of 12.5% predicted this year by retail analysts it will be worth more like £315 million! A decade ago consumers only spent £12 million on Halloween so you can see why supermarkets and major retailers take the display and promotion of Halloween products seriously.

 

 

 

As we do every year we look forward to the Halloween installations, it's a fun time of year in the warehouse and for the teams out on the road making up seasonal aisles up and down the country delight customers and their children with their spooky displays!

 

Look out for our next blog with photo's of the 2012 displays once they're installed!