MARTINS MELECIS
By Ed Avis
Are you ready to sell a lot of makeup this Halloween season? You should be! Costumes dominate Halloween, but makeup is not far behind. According to the NCA Halloween 2022 Survey, nearly 70 percent of costume shops report that makeup is an important seller during the season.
“Every time I think I have all of my makeup orders completed, people walk through my door asking for even more breadth and variety, and the latest things they've seen on YouTube and TikTok,” wrote on respondent to the survey.
We asked several NCA Vendor Members who manufacture makeup about what costume retailers should stock to take full advantage of Halloween makeup sales, and here is what they reported.
Blood and Gore
Blood makeup, in many varieties, plays a big role in Halloween. People use blood makeup to complete the zombie look, make horrible wounds, create blood-thirsty vampires, and enhance countless other characters.
To make blood-related sales easy, consider Graftobian’s Bucket of Blood, a point-of-sale container that holds 144 single-use blood gel packets that customers can use to enhance any gory look. “The ever-popular Blood Gel is a deep red, glycerin-based fake blood that never dries. It gives the realistic look of oozing, wet, thick blood,” the company’s website declares. A related product is Graftobian’s ZombieGutz, which is a gel pack that comes in three zombie-related shades that can be mixed with the blood gel packs to create especially disgusting wounds. ZombieGutz also come in POS buckets for the counter.
“Bucket of Blood and Bucket of Gutz are must-haves for every cash register,” says Janine Wardale, the makeup guru at Graftobian. “These are great impulse items and people will pick up more than one!”
Another clever blood-related product is Kryolan Eye Blood. This liquid, which comes in an eyedropper bottle, creates bloody, weepy eyes. You can add to the bloody eyes look with Kryolan’s Bruise Cream Color Circle or Burn Cream Color Circle, each of which provide five colors of makeup suitable for creating those faux wounds. Or maybe the Fresh Scratch Set, which makes it look like the character just survived a fight with a cat!
There are other makeup products that provide a complete gore look, such as Camden’s Moon FX line, which includes scar wax, spirit gum, fake blood and liquid latex for creating truly haunting effects. Similarly, Graftobian’s Severe Trauma Kit contains everything a customer needs to create disgusting wounds, including spirit gum, liquid latex, modeling wax, blood gel, face powder, 6 color shades, and the tools to apply everything.
Character Kits
Many vendors offer convenient kits that provide all the components of a particular Halloween-related character look. For example, Mehron has a series of Professional Character Kits that can transform customers into a skeleton, zombie, werewolf, vampire, witch and other characters.
“Each kit includes all the makeup and accessories you need to complete the look, plus easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions on how to create the look,” says Katie Perez, Mehron’s marketing manager.
Wolfe FX also offers a number of character kits, such as the for Wolfman, Devil, Skull, Vampire Zombie and Clown. Each contains the makeup and simple instructions to make the desired character. Graftobian also has kits like these, including for Skull, Monster, Witch and Clown.
“These complete kits with step-by-step instructions are great ‘grab and go’ items,” Graftobian’s Wardale notes.
For slightly more sophisticated customers, Mehron’s Special FX All-Pro Makeup Kit offers a large selection of products ranging from liquid latex to 3-D gel to faux hair, all designed to help people create professional-looking facial effects.
“This Special FX Kit features all the items you need to create any special effects makeup, and it also comes with step-by-step tutorials to how you how to use the products,” Perez says.
A lot of these make-up kits can be accented with related accessories. For example, the false teeth in Wolfe’s Dental Distortion line are movie-quality products that add a seriously scary touch to zombies, vampires, werewolves and many other monsters. These aren’t the cheapy plastic things you buy in bulk from China – these are long-lasting, high-margin teeth that serious monster aficionados are willing to invest in.
Another Halloween makeup accessory is faux hair. Mustaches, an NCA Vendor Member located in Lithuania, offers a tremendous range of high-quality faux beards and mustaches that can complete the “old man” look and many other characters. Kryolan also offers faux beards, mustaches and eye brows and lashes.
More Fun than Scary
Of course, not every customer coming into your makeup department around Halloween is looking for gore! Fun make-up sells well during the season, too.
For example, Camden offers a wide variety of colorful, glitzy products that people love to use, such as Moon Face Jewels, which come in 26 designs ranging from Neon UV to Glow in the Dark to Halloween; and Moon Bio Glitter, an environmentally friendly glitter made from plant cellulose that is just as sparkly as regular glitter.
Camden’s Moon Glow line also includes Neon UV Lipstick – which comes in 16 colors and fluoresces spectaularly under UV lighting and black light – and Neon Face & Body Paint, a set of 16 colors that are 100 percent vegan and wash off easily with soap and water. As with the lipstick, the body paint glows under UV or black light.
Graftobian offers some fun colored products as well. Their Glitter Hairspray makes wigs and natural hair party-ready, and their Glitter Glam Liquid Skin Sparkle is “perfect for any character that needs a touch of sparkle,” Wardale says.
If you have a customer looking for something completely different, offer them Kryolan’s Icing FX Kit. Just like it sounds, it makes the wearer look like they just walked in from a blizzard!
The Essentials
And don’t forget to stock basic make-up in a wide variety of colors, because you never know what a customer might need.
Good selling products in this category include Wolfe Makeup Sticks, which are easy for parents and children to use and come in clamshell packages with six colors per package, including Metallic, Neon, and Essential.
Mehron offers some great sets of basic and fun color make-up as well, Perez says: “Mehron’s Paradise Makeup AQ™ is a water-activated face and body makeup that is beloved by professionals for its pigmented formula that is easy to blend, long-wear, and gentle on the skin. The 8 Color Basic Palette provides all the shades needed to mix and match any shade you may need to create your Halloween look!”
New this year is Mehron’s 8 Color Neon UV Paradise Makeup AQ Palette, which is made from the same formula but in UV reactive shades.
Camden also offers a basic set in a “crayon” format for easy use. The Moon Creations Face & Body Crayons come in 16 colors in a sweat proof and water resistant formula.
Speaking of colors, Wardale advises that stores stock some metallic colors, such as Graftobian’s Metal Mania in Silver and Gold. “Superheroes continue to be popular and often need a touch of a metallic look to complete the makeup,” she explains.
Final Tips
Makeup is a fun add-on product at Halloween, and you’ll sell more of it if you have knowledgable people on staff. Few customers are professionals – they’ll feel better if your staff can explain how to use the product and get the best results. Train your staff in advance to know the differences among the makeup products you’re offering, what effects can be created with which products, and how much of each product they’ll need to last through the Halloween party season.
In this COVID-aware era, stores are naturally reluctant to allow customers to try the makeup. But you’ll probably sell more if you create a demo opportunity. Use disposable pallets (just small pieces of cardboard) and disposable applicators, and don’t let anyone dip directly into the tester. Of course, have a trash can handy for quick disposal.
The Halloween season is already busy, of course, but it’s also a great time to hold some makeup workshops. If you have someone on staff who can reliably create zombies, accident victims, skull faces or other such characters, you’ll be delighted how many customers will crowd in for a workshop. And don’t forget Day of the Dead – characters associated with that holiday always use lots of makeup, and a workshop that teaches people those looks will definitely be popular.
Lastly, make sure you have enough of everything on hand. Halloween was big in 2021, and probably will be even bigger this year. Be ready to profit from it!