Embellishing the season from Halloween to Harvest

Drug Store News, Oct 5, 1998 by Allene Symons

Saturday acts as a tonic for seasonal sales. This year, Halloween falls on a Saturday, and it's sure to mean parties for all ages, with more costumes, more voice-chip talking novelties, more home decor items and more packages of candy and cans of beer sold than last year.

So, if a retailer--say, Rite Aid--fears a sugar-level drop after Halloween, a good antidote would be to stretch out and embellish the holiday and call it Harvest.

That's just what Rite Aid has done this year. Its new Harvest offering, which began shipping in August, starts before Halloween and lasts through Thanksgiving, with the emphasis on home decor.

Scarecrows are one of the signature themes, a good choice to span the season since these figures are scary but also symbolize the earth's bounty, which is associated with Thanksgiving.

Harvest products in this new Rite Aid "holiday" include items in wicker, candles and accessories, garlands and florals, home decor and polyresin molded items. The Rite Aid program's set up included videos for store staff showing how to present the Harvest concept.

Other drug chains are also going after Halloween and fall seasonal home decor. At Snyder's Drug, seasonal buyer Mike Dobbe said the seasonal home decor segment is growing. "You see people doing more to create effects for in-home or the drive-by aspect of their home." To catch this trend, Snyder's is offering more craft-type items, such as those for centerpieces.

Pumpkins aplenty

Among the new offerings, as manufacturers look for the means to meet consumer demand for ways to celebrate at home, is Hallmark's Party Express Photo Pumpkin, a jack-o'-lantern photographic pattern perfect for Halloween parties but with legs that take it into late fall. Other new patterns for spanning the season include party goods patterns, such as fall wreath and stitchwork turkey.

Guild House, a division of American Greetings, is offering candles for decorating and jack-o'-lantern illumination, including orange and black votives and orange tealights. RC Company, based in Rush City, Minn., offers white ghosts and orange pumpkin diecut electric luminarias for home and yard.

No party is complete without music, and prerecorded audio is showing up in more major drug chains these days. K-Tel's Halloween floor display includes four new titles for 1998: "Cool Ghoul's Monster Party Mix;" "Dimension of Horror: The Demented Doctor;" "Horror and Terror, Part I;" and "Horror and Terror, Part II." K-Tel contributes a portion of its proceeds from "Cool Ghoul" Halloween products to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Besides candy, always a monster segment for Halloween, suppliers are suggesting other treats for kids. BIC's Wavelength Monster, U.F.O. and Shimmers pens are supported with displays touting them as party favors and an alternative to candy.

Drug chains dealing in beer should do well with Halloween parties for grown-ups this year. Halloween is a growing adult party occasion. With great expectations, since the holiday lands on Saturday this year, Coors has shipped an eye-popping, life-sized cutout of 1998 Coors Light Queen of Halloween supermodel Daisy Fuentes in a slinky black gown, designed to sell more beer.

What about when Saturday, Oct. 31 is over--aside from maybe a slight hangover? One sure thing is that this year's Halloween sales figures may be hard to beat when the holidays hit a run of weekdays.

That's one reason Rite Aid is bringing in more scarecrows and pumpkins for Harvest: as a good hedge against an up-and-down market.