Business Opportunities Weblog

September 27, 2011 by Dane Carlson | 1 Comment

Inc.:

So, Halloween is right around the corner, and you want some glow-in the-dark vampire fangs or a green bug-eyed-alien mask. If you live in or around New York City, chances are you will wind up in one of the 30 or so pop-up Ricky’s Halloween stores. It’s just a costume for you, but for nearly 1,000 temporary pop-up staff members, decked out in Dracula and Anthony Weiner costumes, it’s a flat-out frenzy, with crowds and lines out the door.

Opening 30 temporary stores for just two months may seem like a nutty way to run a business that, the rest of the year, consists of just 28 permanent beauty-supply shops. But since the co-founder and CEO of Ricky’s, Todd Kenig, opened the chain’s first pop-up store, in 2005, he has come to rely on the temporary outlets as critical tools in the expansion of Ricky’s. Halloween sales account for about 20 percent of the chain’s annual $55 million in sales. Yet more important than added revenue is the pop-ups’ ability to serve as test sites for permanent Ricky’s locations. “The profit is the icing on the cake,” says Kenig. “The real benefit is to study the demographics in an area.”

Photo by Randy Son Of Robert.

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Tags: Halloween, nyc, popup, Retail