More than 2,000 people showed up for the grand opening of Spirit Halloween's flagship store in New Jersey last month, with some camping out up to three days ahead of time for the event as the spooky holiday's popularity grows.

"One store open, 1,449 to go!" Greg Parsons, the retailer's senior manager of real estate, said in a post about the holiday season kickoff on LinkedIn.

Halloween, celebrated on Oct. 31, means big business in the United States, becoming virtually the only holiday that sparks the opening of hundreds of pop-up stores across the nation annually. The two major players in that particular retail space, Spirit Halloween and Party City, are both increasing the number of temporary Halloween stores they are opening this year, despite the ghoulish specter of inflation, for a total of roughly 1,600 stores.

Those retailers are taking advantage of the vacant space, especially big-box locations, that still dot the national landscape. It's a two-way street: With their rents, Spirit Halloween and Party City are helping landlords foot the bill for their carrying costs, including taxes and insurance, on empty properties, while driving traffic to shopping centers and malls.

“I think bricks-and-mortar Halloween stores will always be around for a simple reason: Kids love to shop for something like that so it’s a great family experience," Chuck Lanyard, president of The Goldstein Group, told CoStar News. "It’s just like going out and picking pumpkins. ... It’s a family outing.”

Soon Spirit Halloween sites will be almost as ubiquitous as pumpkin spice lattes. The retailer, based in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, plans to have over 1,450 pop-up stores this year, which is up nearly 2% from last year, according to a company spokeswoman. It is now hiring over 35,000 store associates throughout the United States and Canada for those sites. The pop-ups started opening on July 30 and will remain open until the start of November. In October, "Spirit Halloween: The Movie," set in one of the pop-ups, will begin streaming for real aficionados of the chain, which bills itself as the country's largest Halloween retailer.

Party City, headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, is slated this year to debut 130 to 150 Halloween City pop-ups, an increase from last year's 90 locations, CEO Brad Weston told Wall Street analysts during an earnings call on Monday. That number is still far less than the 250 it had in 2019, prior to the peak of the pandemic. Party City describes itself as "the leading party goods and Halloween specialty retailer by revenue in North America."

Increasing the number of Halloween City sites “puts us in much stronger position than even just [having] the 750 Party City chain stores," according to Weston.

“We are ready for the important Halloween season, and remain cautiously optimistic," he said. "We will have an improved year-over-year experience for the consumer. ... We also believe there is also some potential pent-up demand from last year.”

Pop-ups such as Spirit Halloween typically pay premium rents, according to Lanyard, because they are negotiating for short-term occupancy and don't have the leverage a tenant seeking a long-term lease has with a landlord.

There is still secondary and tertiary retail space available, especially sites 5,000 to 15,000 square feet, with good visibility on highways that can accommodate the pop-ups, Lanyard said. Spirit Halloween is setting up shop in several former grocery stores already, including a Kroger, a former Shopko, and several vacant furniture stores.

“I think because of the vacancies, landlords will once again be enticed by having somebody come in and pay very strong rents for only a 90-day period,” he said.

Spirit Halloween, which is owned by Spencer Gifts, and Party City and its Halloween City stores have competition for shoppers' dollars when it comes to the autumn holiday, from national discounters such as Walmart to the new Toys R Us store-in-store sites that are beginning to open throughout the Macy's department-store chain to online sellers such as Amazon. But it's a growing market.

The National Retail Federation next month is scheduled to release its outlook for Halloween spending this year. Last year, based on a survey the trade organization predicted that Halloween-related spending would hit an all-time high of $10.14 billion, up from $8.05 billion in 2020. Based on that survey, the NRF estimated 65% of Americans intended to celebrate Halloween or participate in Halloween activities last year, up from 58% in 2020 and comparable with 68% in 2019 before the COVID-19 outbreak.

Per-person Halloween spending has been steadily trending up since the the NRF began tracking it in 2005, though it dipped in 2009 during the Great Recession and in 2020 during the pandemic. Last year, it was estimated to be $102.74.

Spirit Halloween, which is has been in business for 39 years, carries Halloween costumes, home decor, outdoor decorations, party goods and accessories for infants to adults. Its pop-ups feature animatronics that aim to help create an interactive in-store experience.

The retailer kicked off this season "earlier than ever" with the grand opening of its first store late last month in Egg Harbor Township. Throngs gathered to get a first look at the trailer for the "Spirit Halloween" movie and a glimpse of the company's merchandise assortment this year. Some of the cast members of the film also attended the event. The first 200 guests also received "a frighteningly good swag bag prior to the official store opening," according to the retailer.

"The official opening of Spirit Halloween stores is always special, but there is an extra buzz in the air this year with the news of our first-ever feature length film," Steven Silverstein, Spirit Halloween's CEO, said in a statement.

The company details its criteria for its pop-up stores on its website.

"Spirit is ideally looking for temporary three-month leases that include a kick-out clause (should the landlord secure a permanent deal by June)," the site says. "Since Spirit locations open on or about Sept. 1 and remain open through Nov. 1, our ideal lease would run from mid- July through mid-November. We like to locate our stores in power centers, strip centers, free-standing stores, major downtown retail locations and in major malls surrounded by a national retailer mix."

Spirit Halloween is looking to open stores in areas with a population of 35,000 or more living within a 3-to-5-mile radius with a car count of at least 25,000 vehicles a day.

"While our ideal locations feature between 5,000 to 50,000 square feet of sales floor space with awesome visibility, no store is too large (or too small)," according to the website.

Party City — whose net sales decreased 1.5% to $527.4 million in the second quarter, while comparable sales dropped 5.6% — has taken special steps to make sure it has Halloween inventory in stock, according to Weston.

“We are pleased to have Halloween product here and available for customers earlier than last year" but there's an associated expense, he told analysts.

Because of supply-chain issues, Party City early Halloween-product deliveries temporarily exceeded the company's warehouse capacity, which resulted in incremental charges as containers await processing and unloading, Weston said.

Party City is bullish on Halloween sales this year because of its results for recent holidays such as Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, LGBT Pride Month and graduations, according to the CEO. Those sales were up 30% versus the same time as last year.

Party City also anticipates that Halloween sales will be strong even though the holiday falls on a Monday, because there's a full weekend ahead of it for parties and events for adults and young adults to celebrate, according to Weston.

Lanyard also expects it to be a strong Halloween selling season.

“This is probably the first year, even though COVID is still rampant, that people have gotten into this concept that we have to live with these viruses and work around them,” he said. “For that reason, I think this Halloween’s going to be really huge. ... I think that Halloween will be the proof that the American public has learned another way now to deal with COVID, accepting the fact that you’re going to get sick, accepting the fact that you have less chance of dying. It’s not as severe and we have to take a risk and we can’t be locked up for the rest of our lives and this is the new world and the new alternative.”