Esteban Esponda and Adriana Espinosa of Ghoulish Productions.
Editor’s Note: Ghoulish Productions was one of eight NCA Vendor Members who have supported the association’s Help Halloween Happen campaign. In this Q&A with NCA Executive Director Ed Avis, Ghoulish Sales Director Esteban Esponda and Sales Manager Adriana Espinosa explain Ghoulish’s role in Halloween.
Ed Avis: How important is Halloween to Ghoulish?
Ghoulish logo
Esteban Esponda: We get 90 percent of our sales during the Halloween season, so it’s very important. It’s quite uncertain what will happen at Halloween this year, but as a company we want to be really supportive and get the Halloween products into the independent stores and help them make the celebration a unique one this year. We want to help Halloween take away all the stress and pressure of this year. That’s one of our goals this season.
Avis: Tell us how you develop new products.
Esponda: We have two departments that help develop new products. The first is the marketing area, which analyzes consumer trends and gives us some direction about what people are buying. They give proposals to the design team and they use those to create new ideas. The other department is Design and Innovation. They are creating totally new stuff that’s not anywhere on the market yet.
Once these two sections develop the ideas, the designers – we have 10 designers working full time – make sketches by computer. The sketches are approved by a committee, and the designs are prioritized. Then the designers complete the designs for the coming year.
Normally our process for creating a new mask can be six months long. But if it’s a trendy item that needs fast creating, we do what’s called a “quick hit.” For example, right now we’re in the presidential campaign season, so we have just some weeks to design and create masks for that.
Avis: How has COVID affected Ghoulish?
Esponda: From a sales perspective, some markets were more affected than others. For example, the European market has dropped 40 percent from last year, and our Mexican market is down 50 percent. In the U.S., one of our main markets, it’s not as badly damaged, but I think it’s down 10 percent from last year. In total, our sales are 20 to 30 percent down from last year.
In the factory COVID has affected us somewhat because we normally hire more people during the high season, but this year we had to stay with the people we had. We didn’t close the factory, but we made double-turns, with some people working in the morning and some at night, to create more space in the factory.
Some people, like the sales team, the elderly or pregnant workers, were sent home to work. That affected us somewhat because they weren’t coming to the factory. We did have some more expenses related to that, because for those people doing production at home, we had to go to their houses and collect the products after they finished.
Adriana Espinosa: I was one of the first people sent home; I’ve been working at home since February. I work a lot with the computer, so I took the laptop to my house. It’s OK, but I normally like to check my customers’ orders before they are packed and shipped, so I have gone to the office once or twice. I think the main adverse effect will be later when we return to the office -- it will be difficult because we got used to work at home. But I’m happy because I’ve lost five pounds! I eat more times a day but smaller portions. At the factory it’s hard to do that because I have to respect the schedule of the lunch times.
Avis: Esteban, is Ghoulish a family business?
Esponda: Yes, my grandpa founded the factory 60 years ago and my father and my uncle followed him. Now we are in the third generation. I’ve worked here 10 years – it’s totally fun!
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