Hollow shelves greet Halloween enthusiasts
Decorations are another victim of supply chain bottlenecks that create shortages, boost prices
Planning a Halloween party? If you haven’t lined up your decorations, you might be in for a scare.
With two weeks to go before Halloween, shelves that once held pumpkins, ghosts and spider webs are already picked clean, driving serious enthusiasts of the holiday to the secondary market — AKA eBay and Facebook Marketplace — to hunt for skulls and skeletons at premium, if not frightening prices.
Mariana Pope said she spent a week searching for a 12-foot skeleton for her yard in West U before forking over $600 for one secondhand — double what it sold for in stores before they vanished over the summer. And that might have been a bargain: the skeletons were listed for as much as $1,000 on Facebook Marketplace.
“We’ve always really liked to decorate for Halloween. My husband goes all out,” she said, noting the 12-foot skeletons first caught their eye last year and they vowed to get one. “I had no idea they were so popular.”
Halloween decorations have become another victim of supply chain bottlenecks that are creating shortages and boosting prices, and could foreshadow a Christmas season in which must-have gifts just can’t be had. The bottlenecks — the result of surging post-pandemic demand, labor shortages and COVID outbreaks disrupting production — have prevented goods from computer chips to bottles of Topo Chico getting where they’re wanted or needed.
At the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California, where about 40 percent of shipping containers enter the United States, ships are waiting days and weeks to get unloaded and consumer goods are sitting on docks, waiting to be transported to their destinations.
Augie Bering, owner of Houston-based Bering’s Hardware, said he ordered Halloweenthemed items months ago. He’s still waiting for most of it to arrive — hopefully before Halloween.
“Stuff is trickling in, but it’s trickling in later than we had hoped,” Bering said. “There’s
just a huge demand right now for products.”
Home Depot, the retailer selling the coveted 12-foot skeleton, said it first stocked the item in July in what it thought would be a “sneak peek.” But the skeleton, priced at $300, sold out almost immediately and has been difficult to restock.
Halloween shelves at a local Target were nearly bare on a recent evening. Party City said supply chain challenges have made it difficult to keep Halloween items on the shelves, but it plans to replenish ahead of the holiday.
Even Spirit Halloween’s decorations section seems limited. The pop-up retailer, based in New Jersey, said it has experienced “product delays and the significant increase in shipping costs” but has not passed on the higher costs to consumer.
Most Americans (75 percent) will spend money on Halloween this year, according to a recent survey of more than 2,000 people by LendingTree, an online marketplace for lenders. Candy and pumpkin carving supplies topped shopping lists, followed by outdoor decorations, which beat out costumes for the third spot on respondents’ shopping lists, according to the survey.
The survey found 47 percent of parents plan to spend more than they can afford in hopes of making their children happy. Matt Schulz, an analyst with the firm, said in a statement the Halloween splurge follows a pandemic-era spending trend.
“Throughout the pandemic,” Schulz said, “we’ve heard of people going above and beyond when it comes to holidays and other events to make up for how crummy the last couple of years have been.”
Nothing like a $600 skeleton to lift spirits.