How the Halloween market endures by making money off the macabre

Halloween is the only time of year it's normal to see police tape strewn across porches and corpses laying on front lawns.

Grave markers, severed limbs and giant spider webs are acceptable lawn ornaments, too.

It's also normal for children to go knocking on doors demanding candy from strangers, during this very strange season.

At a home on the west side of Windsor, Ont., a grandmother's garden is now home to a skull on a spike that is wearing a rainbow clown wig.

And the deranged clown-and-skull combo is located near a headstone where two hands and another skull seem to be rising from the grave.

Elaine Lucas said she put together the scary display to impress her grandchildren, who she says are enthralled by "everything" that Halloween has to offer.

"The dressing up, the candy, of course," said Lucas, listing their many Halloween likes.

The Halloween market

Across Canada, all of these types of decorations must get in the hands of consumers, along with the millions of pieces of candy they will eat and hand out on Oct. 31. And that doesn't include the many costumes trick-or-treaters will be wearing, along with their parents and the people attending Halloween parties.

Vincent Georgie, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Windsor, said the businesses that sell these things are focused on hanging onto their Halloween market share and the competition is fierce.

"The bottom line is: How do you make sure that people are picking up your box of candy to give out at the door versus someone else's?" he told CBC News in a recent telephone interview.

The money to be made at Halloween is significant. Large retailers in Canada sold an extra $90 million worth of candy, confectionery and snack foods during the month of October last year, as compared to their monthly average.

And according to the last agricultural census, Canada had more than 2,200 farms with pumpkin patches on them. While we all like pumpkin pie, a portion of this produce is destined to become jack-o'-lanterns, whether here or in the U.S.

'Prime trick-or-treating age'

According to Statistics Canada, there are some 3.8 million children in Canada who are 5 to 14 years of age.

It's what the statistics agency calls the "prime trick-or-treating age," or what would seem to be the likely bulk of costume-wearing, candy seekers in a given year.

Interestingly, this age group is not getting bigger. It has ebbed and flowed between about 3.6 million and 4.1 million over the past three decades.

Georgie said that implies that businesses have to work harder for their market share if the core group of Halloween participants isn't growing.

"There would be the movement to try to get maximum participation and better quality participation from houses and families and that at Halloween, because that's a shrinking audience," he said.

Similarly, Georgie said these businesses will work to make Halloween more fun for people of all ages "because if you make it just about the kids, that demographic is shrinking and they all know it."

Big displays, big spending

At Windsor's Halloween Alley, which has sprung up in a building that used to be home to a Bulk Barn, customers can buy anything from costumes to animatronic display elements.

Peter Kyte, the store manager, told CBC News that his customers are spending an average of about $65 per transaction.

He said the people going really big on Halloween are spending more than $1,000 at his store.

Kyte and his wife operate two such stores, the other being in Sarnia, Ont. From their perspective, Halloween is getting bigger every year, which is a great thing for them as business owners.

"We've seen the growth, just from last year to this year. And the growth has been huge and touch wood, it will be the same thing for many, many years to come," said Kyte.

"We used to be in the Christmas business, too, so it's safe for me to say that Halloween has become as big or bigger than Christmas for a lot of folks."

This has been part of the wider trend of Halloween becoming a bigger event for adults, he said.

Kyte believes there are lots of reasons for this, including the rise of social media, which has allowed people to share their creations and experiences with the world.

"It makes it that much more fun," said Kyte.