Will Shreveport Get a Spirit Christmas Store This Holiday Season?
By now, Spirit Halloween stores have integrated themselves into American pop culture. From its inclusion in shows like Saturday Night Live to the vast rush of memes created online any time a business closes, most people are familiar with the business. As well as the business model.
Yes, Spirit Halloween stores generally occupy buildings that were built for another purpose, and they only operate for a short period of time around the Halloween season. But that's not some last ditch effort to keep their business going, its actually the opposite. When founder Joe Marver started the company in 1983, it was designed to be a pop up retailer just for Halloween fans and trick-or-treaters. Its a plan that has worked so well, the company has a website running year round for fans, as well as over 1,400 stores annually.
In 1999, the company Spencer Gifts (yes, the mall Spender's stores) purchased Spirit Halloween, and at that time they were only opening about 60 stores every season.
Now, Spirit is looking to expand. Not geographically...but holiday-wise. As Spirit is now rolling out their Spirit Christmas stores.
No, this isn't another Saturday Night Live joke, this is real. Spirit Christmas will be launching this holiday season to serve all of the Christmas fans out there. Well, not all of the Christmas fans. Because the rollout of Spirit Christmas will actually be small compared to the Spirit Halloween footprint.
Will Shreveport be included in that initial rollout? Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it right now. Bossier City won't be either. In fact, no Louisiana cities are on the list (so far). Everything they have listed is in the American northeast. Including New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.
If you want to be a part of history, and love Christmas that much, maybe look into some airline tickets for the holidays. Otherwise, we'll just have to wait to see if the Christmas Spirit eventually makes it way to us.