Every year after Halloween, the signs come down and Spirit Halloween’s stores empty out. To shoppers, the chain disappears until the following September, when another location pops up somewhere in the neighborhood. To Steven Silverstein, however, the company never closes.

“There’s nothing temporary about a temporary store,” Silverstein, CEO of Spencer Spirit Holdings, told Fortune. “We are 24/7, 365 Halloween, and you just don’t see it.”

Spirit’s stores operate for only eight to 10 weeks a year, but planning for the next Halloween season begins before the current year’s doors shut. The rest of the calendar is devoted to signing leases, manufacturing and shipping millions of costumes, and lining up tens of thousands of seasonal workers.

When Silverstein joined parent company Spencer’s in 2003, there were just 130 Spirit stores nationwide. Today, the chain runs roughly 1,600 locations a year. Moody’s estimated that Spencer’s and Spirit generated about $1.9 billion combined in 2023, and Spirit’s two months of operations bring in more revenue than Spencer’s does. This year, the company completed its purchase of Hot Topic, BoxLunch and Her Universe from Sycamore Partners, giving it more than 3,000 stores across North America.

Spirit is now the largest Halloween specialty chain in North America, and its biggest rival is gone. Party City, which sold costumes alongside party supplies, filed for bankruptcy for the second time in December 2024 and closed its nearly 700 stores by the end of February 2025. Shoppers can now turn to Walmart, Target or Amazon—or visit Spirit in person to catch a show.

“We don’t sell anything anybody needs. We only sell things you have to have,” Silverstein said. “It’s based on wants, not needs.”

An education in retail theater

Silverstein came to Spirit from Linens ’n Things in 2003, well before that chain’s 2008 bankruptcy. But the lesson that shaped his approach came earlier, at Bloomingdale’s, where he started in 1985 under CEO Marvin Traub—a leader Silverstein credits with bringing retail theater to the forefront. In those days, he said, Bloomingdale’s was famous for its country promotions.

“We are in an entertainment business,” Silverstein said of Traub’s lesson. “We need to use our stories to entertain and delight the customer.”

The first Spirit store he saw had none of the bells and whistles expected of today’s version. The fixtures were made from the very boxes the costumes arrived in—simple merchandise cartons wrapped in black plastic—and the checkout counter was built from two-by-fours and cement blocks. Local Halloween shops were opening on every corner, and Party City was, at the time, the category’s main destination.

Silverstein had one goal: turn Spirit into the destination. He wanted shoppers to say they were going to Spirit Halloween, not just to a Halloween store.

The idea kicked into high gear in 2005, when he walked into a Spirit store in Chicago and found that the manager had built a pirate ship in the middle of the floor, with a skeleton at the wheel, fans blowing blue fabric and flickering lights. Truly entertained, Silverstein asked whether the manager could teach others to do the same.

“We got to bring this guy back to New Jersey,” Silverstein recalled saying. “We have to do this in all of our stores.”

That moment grew into the In Store Experience, known to fans as the ISE, according to the Spirit Halloween Fandom site. Each year brings a new theme for fans to try to guess; this year’s is a haunted summer camp called Camp Harbor Lake. Silverstein likens the approach to “five senses retail.”

Finding the building

The operation starts with real estate. The search for buildings runs in March and April, when Spirit lines up its locations and signs leases. The company is “opportunistic,” Silverstein said, and goes after vacant space—but it does not pick buildings simply because they are empty.

“We want to be somewhere we’re going to be seen,” he said. “Because we’re not always in the same place, where we are is a critical question that we’re constantly thinking about

Spirit does not pay market rent. It pays a lump sum for space that would otherwise earn the landlord nothing, and the leases run exactly as long as the store stays open: eight to 10 weeks.

“We’re the empty seat on the airplane,” Silverstein said. “If we don’t go in there, the landlord is not going to generate any revenue.”

He added that the arrangement helps other tenants too, because a Spirit store brings shoppers to a shopping center that would otherwise have a dark storefront. Often, the chain returns to the same buildings year after year. The model works: this fall, about 100 Spirit Halloween stores sit in former Party City buildings, according to an Axios analysis of Spirit’s store locator, and Fortune has previously reported that short-term leases on spaces left behind by bankrupt retailers are key to the strategy.

“Even though we are called pop-up, we really do look at ourselves as being permanently in these markets,” Silverstein said.

Building 1,600 stores at once

Once the leases are signed, Spirit has to fill them. About 75% to 80% of Spirit’s merchandise is designed, developed and sourced by the company, mostly in Asia, meaning it manages every step from factory to shelf.

Goods start shipping in April, but they cannot all arrive at once, Silverstein said, because there is nowhere to put them. Shipping containers go to four or five distribution centers in North America, which sort the goods into store groups. Those groups move on to 63 third-party logistics sites this year, and each site stages the boxes for 25 to 30 stores before loading them onto trucks.

“They’re literally virtually creating a store,” Silverstein said. “If you imagine 1,600 stores happening all at the same time, it’s like a web of activity.”

Training 52,000 workers

Spirit employs more than 52,000 people during the season, and many come back every year. Silverstein said some workers plan their year around the job.

The company describes its structure as an inverted pyramid, with store employees at the top.

“We know that our front line is the most important part of our business,” he said. “It’s not about a top-down driven organization.”

Much of the behind-the-scenes work goes into making a complex store setup simple enough for seasonal staff to carry out on time, he said, so that workers feel able to run it themselves.

Yes, they’ve seen the memes

Spirit has become mononymous, and that fame has placed it squarely in the cultural zeitgeist—most visibly in memes, from fake Spirit Halloween costume packages of public figures to a Saturday Night Live skit during the show’s 50th anniversary season. Asked about the memes, Silverstein deadpanned, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Then he acknowledged the company has earned them.

“When SNL did the skit, hey, that’s the highest form of flattery,” he said. Spirit answered with a costume of the 50-year-old comedy show itself. Its only contribution to the meme packages was a costume of a Spirit Halloween store.

The company spends little on traditional advertising, and Silverstein calls Spirit an “alternative marketer,” letting its storefronts, the internet and brand tie-ins do the work. Spirit has partnered with Dunkin’, Butterfinger and Chipotle, producing a limited-edition costume for each. This year it teamed up with Goodyear and sold a blimp costume; at one store’s grand opening, a man jumped out of a blimp into the parking lot.

Silverstein said the same idea runs through Spencer’s and Hot Topic.

Swallowing the mall

Spirit’s newest act is Hot Topic. In August, Spencer Spirit agreed to buy Hot Topic, BoxLunch and Her Universe from Sycamore Partners, which took Hot Topic private in 2013 for about $600 million—a transaction that brings six retail brands under one roof, according to License Global. The deal closed in early September. Terms were not disclosed.

The purchase also extends the company’s reach beyond Spirit’s seasonal Halloween business into year-round retail centered on fandom, licensed merchandise and pop culture.

For a generation of mall rats, Hot Topic was the mall. Founder Orv Madden opened the first store in Montclair, Calif., in 1989, and through the 2000s it was where teenagers went for band tees, spiky chokers and skinny jeans. Licensed band T-shirts made up about 40% of its revenue in 2007, according to that year’s annual report. Since then, the chain has leaned into anime, gaming and fandom merchandise, and in 2015 it launched BoxLunch, a pop-culture gift chain.

Hot Topic operates more than 615 stores and BoxLunch more than 280. Both keep their California headquarters and run independently, and Hot Topic CEO Steve Vranes, who has led the company for more than a decade, now reports to Silverstein.

“Hot Topic is the best at really talking to the fans of their properties,” Silverstein said. “They are in the zeitgeist when it comes to talking about what’s going on in pop culture.” Then, reprising his core philosophy, he added: “I’m entertaining you.”

This story was originally reported by Fortune.