Editor's Note: There is a lot of anxiety in the costume industry about the effects of the tariffs. NCA Board Member Courtland Hickey, owner of Chicago Costume, offers a nuanced -- and optimistic -- view of the situation.
Since COVID, our industry has changed. The big brands merged and consolidated, slicing up the market and feeding the biggest players—Amazon, Spirit, big box chains—while many of us fought just to stay standing. They’ve flooded the market with cheap, fast-fashion imports, setting unrealistic expectations for pricing and delivery. And while we may carry those same imports at times, the results aren’t the same for us. The volume game doesn’t work when margins vanish, and margins are what we survive on.
I’ve watched those same cheap goods erode in-store sales—year-round, but especially at Halloween. It’s not just the sales, it’s what happens after: Spirit vanishes and dumps new product in the trash because they didn’t have room to take it back. What’s left behind is waste, pollution, and a customer base conditioned to value cheap over good.
This new tariff chaos hasn’t been handled well—like so many things in our country lately—but it has peeled back the curtain on just how deep our reliance on cheap overseas manufacturing has become. Those $30 costumes? They wind up in the landfill within days. That polyester? It’s in our food, water, and lungs. All because customers were trained by big retail to expect disposability.
Meanwhile, Chinese factories are now on TikTok showing off how they make luxury goods, encouraging people to cut out American retailers altogether. Some even mock the idea of American manufacturing returning—using AI-generated images of overweight Americans at sewing machines. It’s disturbing, but revealing.
To be clear: I’m not against all imports. But if this shift hurts Amazon dropshippers, Spirit Halloween, or Walmart’s over-imported costume lines—I’m not going to mourn. In fact, I see it as a chance for us to reclaim what made local retail special.
So here’s what I’m doing this Halloween:
- No more sales or discounts. I’m raising prices on all new product and charging what it's worth.
- Refreshing old stock. Cleaning, dusting, and repackaging what we already have. If new inventory is limited, our old inventory will shine.
- Reorganizing our stores and website to highlight in-stock and ready-to-ship products.
- Preparing for a potentially great Halloween. With Party City gone, fewer Spirit locations, and disrupted imports, this might be our moment. I ordered cautiously this year—if stock doesn’t arrive, I’m not left with debt.
- Looking inward for creativity. We’re using the sewing room, the 3D printer, and every scrap of fabric and foam we already have. We’re building from what we own.
This is hard. Retail is always hard. But I know what we do matters, and I believe there’s still value in what we offer that Amazon and fast fashion can’t replicate.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being part of a community that gets it.
Courtland Hickey, Chicago Costume