Trick or Treat? or Level 3?

The
Halloween industry is getting no treats from Covid.

“The Delta outbreak and resulting alert level increases
over the last few months have meant we’ve had a lot of costume bookings
cancelled or postponed as their events have been cancelled or rescheduled,”
said Sonia Fursdon, owner of Waikato Costume Hire.

Now Halloween – on October 31 – could be added
to the 2021 casualty list as parts of the Waikato will be at Level 3 until
October 27 at least.

“One of the biggest challenges of this outbreak
has been the uncertainty, particularly being so close now to our busy season of
Halloween, then the Christmas and end of year party season. With alert levels
potentially changing at short notice and updates every four days or so, it’s
been really hard to organise and plan things like seasonal staff recruitment
and rostering or retail stock levels,” Sonia said.

Halloween celebrations have become one of the
main events for Sonia’s costume rental business in Hamilton East. She is
concerned about the decline of the business turnover due to the latest Delta outbreaks
and fears the lockdown may have already put out the Halloween hype.

“The spread of Delta in Waikato and Auckland
means that many Halloween events have already been cancelled, and level 2 and 3
restrictions mean that people definitely won’t be dressing up and going out
celebrating it at bars and pubs as they might have in other years.  

“We’ve generally seen a drop in people booking
costumes ahead of time, uncertain if their event will go ahead, and because
event organisers and would-be party hosts are reluctant to plan events too far
out.”  

The retail sector of suffered a 15 per cent
fall in sales in 2020, the biggest drop in a quarter of a century, and there
are fears the Delta breakout could bring a harder hit.

The success of Super Saturday in Waikato was not
sufficient to convince the Government to ease lockdown levels. It did this week
announced its third Resurgence Support Payments programme this week, but much
of the damage is done.

“What our customers love about us over local
discount retailers or purchasing cheap costumes online is that you can browse
through the costumes in person, check the quality and know what they look like
in real life, and most importantly try them on so you know they’ll fit. At
alert level 3, without being able to come in store, that becomes much more challenging,”
Sonia said.

The 102 new community cases yesterday increased
uncertainty.

“Best case scenario for us on this Halloween,
is that we’ll be back to Level 2 before October 31. As soon as we do go to
Level 2, we’ll be opening the shop longer hours, and I’ll probably be roping in
friends and family to help out since it’ll be such short notice.

“If we’re still in Level 3 on October 31, even
private Halloween parties and Trick or Treating won’t be able to go ahead, so
we’ll be trying to encourage people to dress up and celebrate within their
bubbles, and we expect that the accessories retail side of our business will
make up more of our income, rather than costume hire side of things.”