Halloween Sales Headed Up

CHICAGO-”This isn’t busy,” Kosta Panayotoy told GSR about a week and a half before Halloween. “Next week, you won’t be able to get in here.”

Panayotoy is the co-owner of the Chicago Costume Co., whose year-round store is located on the city’s North Side. But in speaking with GSR, he was referring to the company’s temporary store in Chicago’s CBD, opened a few weeks before at the site of a defunct Briazz restaurant at 201 W. Madison. At the time, about two dozen people — all adults — were in the temporary shop, inspecting its sizable selection of kids’ and adults’ costumes, headgear, props, and Halloween novelty items.

“In October, we open in a few other places in Chicago,” he said. “I don’t know what the numbers are going to be this year, but every year until last sales got better and better. In a good economy, people have money. In a bad economy, they want to party.”