Editor’s Note: NCA Member All Star Halloween is a year-round destination for Halloween lovers. Owner Scott Lunsford spoke with NCA Executive Director Ed Avis.
Avis: When did you start your business?
Lunsford: All Star Halloween started 9 years ago in Calhoun, Georgia. We actually started in a 4,000 square foot building and we try to grow it each year. I think now we're right at 11,000 square feet. It’s a year-round business, but September and October are the busiest.
Why did you open the business?
Scott Lunsford showing off the latest Ghostface masks.
Well, I grew up in Calhoun, Georgia, which is a small town. And trick or treating was kind of like a social event back in the day. That's where you got to see everybody, play with everybody and stuff like that. It's just fond memories. I’m an insurance agent and sell fireworks, too, but I just have always wanted to open a Halloween store and it just seemed like the right time to do it.
One of my best friends is Scott Morris (of Morris Costumes), and I leaned on Scotty real heavy through all this. Matter of fact, if it hadn't been for Scott, I probably would have given up the first year because it was so much.
You were in the fireworks business before the costume business?
I was raised in fireworks. My uncle had a family who had a bunch of firework stores in Alabama. We have about 20 something acres here and my insurance office, the house, and both the fireworks store and the Halloween store are here.
Where are your customers coming from?
Our customers come from everywhere. It's become a destination. We have people from Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, you name it. They come just to spend the day with us.
A haunted fountain in front of All Star Halloween
What makes your store special that people travel so far to be there?
I think our store is special because we are unlike any other Halloween store that I've ever heard of and the customers relay that back to us, too. It's almost like an interactive, fun environment, but it's also a store.
When you pull up the driveway you drive under an arch and see a graveyard that we set out. And we have a midway, with games and food and things. It's a place to hang out and have fun for a while.
In October, we do something for kids every weekend, like pumpkin carving, pumpkin painting. We have clowns, we have balloon shape people. We have shooting galleries where the kids get to shoot at the targets. And then we have all the bouncies and all that stuff, too. All of that is going on in front of the store.
We sell donuts, candy apples, popcorn, drink. We sell tons of pumpkins, we sell cornstalks. And of course inside the store we sell costumes, animatronics, custom made stuff. We sell stuff from low, low budget to high, high end.
A few of the animatronics at All Star Halloween
One section of the store is all costumes. We have another section of the store that's costumes and makeup, and then I've got a 2,000-square-foot room that's all animatronics. And when you walk in, it's dark. I have flames (lights) so people can see what those animatronics look like at night. And then the last room is all outdoor décor.
We also have actor signings in September. I try not to do it in October, because it's just so crowded. This September we got Tyler Mayne coming and Zach Galligan, which is Billy on the Gremlins. That's usually a pretty big day.
How do you find these actors?
We just know a lot of people. And this weekend we were at the CreepyCon, and they had a whole bunch of actors and we made contact with several who want to come to the store.
Do you know how many people come in the Halloween season?
We get probably around 10,000 customers in September and October.
Give us some details about the products in your store.
Well, I have about 780 masks displayed all at one time. We carry a lot of silicones, we sell about probably about 40 silicones a year. And we carry custom masks from a lot of different artists. We’ve met them at Transworld and we've grown with a lot of them. We also sell masks from Trick or Treat Studios, Ghoulish and Oktober. And I still have a lot of Zagones. And FunWorld and Rubies.
For costumes, we have Rubies, Dream Girl, Disguise, Jax and others. We also do some rentals, but it’s the high-end costumes, like high-dollar Darth Vader, Storm Troopers, Spider Man, high-end Renaissance costumes. Some of those are $1,100 or $1,200 costumes, and it takes a special person to come buy that. So until they do, I’m going to rent it out.
For décor, we have a guy who custom makes full-size coffins. We sell about 20 of those a year.
What about the other seasons besides Halloween?
I'm going to be honest with you, that store is busy every day. Of course, September, October is going to be the busiest time, but I guarantee there's 4 or 5 cars sitting there right now. It's always steady.
In October, you get people that care nothing about just where can I find that Pokemon costume. That's all they care about. The rest of the year is people like us that actually have a passion and love for Halloween and they're there just to see what's new and just surround themselves with Halloween and just immerse themselves and buy Halloween stuff. It's just beautiful, because those customers are so respectful and they just love the art and what we carry.
How do you market?
I have a, a very sophisticated Facebook guru guy. I have a very good marketing team. It's mostly Facebook ads, Instagram, TikTok, all that stuff.
We do we do online sales, too, through Shopify. We ship stuff all over the country. I mean, we also ship stuff out of the country. We just shipped a bunch of Ghostface stuff to a guy in Germany.
That’s the end of my questions, but would you like to add anything?
We're just proud of the store. I mean, we've had people like Daniel Roebuck, Tyler Maine do signings, and they've been to hundreds and hundreds of stores. And they're like, dude, there's not one like this anywhere.