Love Halloween? Business Opportunities and Self-Employed Side-Career Ideas

If you love Halloween – I mean, really LOVE it – you might consider a self-employed side business centered around the holiday.  According to Value Village (a popular Halloween destination retailer), the average family of four will spend $300 to celebrate the holiday.  To learn more about Halloween economics, both in the U.S. and Canada, check out these links:

About.com’s Halloween Business Opportunities article;

National Retail Federation’s “Big Blog” post on Halloween Econ this year, with a related CNN video

National Retail Federation consumer spending study results

Value Village’s Press Kit for its annual online survey results (Trends and Survey Data)

Top 5 Halloween Businesses, from the Intuit blog

Halloween Industry's Evolution to a $6 Billion Business, from the Huffington Post

If you don’t love Halloween, you might browse the Holiday and Consumer Trends News at the National Retail Federation website for ideas about other holidays.

As you can see from the above photo, I am probably not the best potential customer, encouraging my son’s idea to “make my own [crow] costume.” Being a crow and the wing design were his ideas – not bad for Pre-K engineering. Cost: zero.  Added bonus - his black turtleneck outfit could conveniently convert to a Steve Jobs costume in case of costume malfunction/destruction.

For the record, this year our family spent $30 on Halloween candy, $30 on pumpkins and $30 on two trips through corn mazes.  Shows where our priorities lie: gourds, navigating maps (but you knew that already) and stuffing ourselves with leftover candy….

Happy Halloween!