Costume shop taps into Halloween business

By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
NILES -- It's a late-October afternoon, and Ward's Costume Shoppe is bustling with would-be masqueraders, not one under age 21.
At the register, two young women make plans to rent a set of six Amish outfits for a night of bar-hopping with friends.
Owner Shirley Ward James rings up a cheerleader costume for a female bartender who plans to wear it to work, then suggests accessories to a man garbed in a long, black priest's robe.
Ward's Costume has been catering to customers' Halloween needs for more than half a century, and the most remarkable change James has seen is the age of the participants.
"Halloween is becoming another Christmas for adults," she said. "Adults really get into it. I've had people come in as early as August to start planning their costumes."
Her theory is that adults get so stressed-out over Christmas and New Year celebrations that they need another event where they unwind and act like kids. Halloween costume parties fit the bill.
Sales of accessories, such as plastic swords, feather boa shawls, gangster hats, clown makeup and magic equipment are Ward's biggest moneymakers.
The shop has more than 1,500 costumes and hundreds of latex, feather and sequin-trimmed masks, ranging from hideous outer space aliens and monsters to replicas of famous faces. Spider-Man and Scooby-Doo were among the most popular costume choices this year.
Diversification
Though Halloween remains the store's busiest season, James said the business has managed to survive for 53 years by diversifying.
She'll give the sales floor a new look for November by bringing out her inventory of Santa suits, elf outfits, reindeer costumes and other Christmas-related attire.
James also stocks shepherd and angel outfits, beards, wigs and other accessories appropriate for Bible school and church Christmas pageants.
After Christmas she'll reorganize again, moving her selection of rabbit costumes to the front of the store. "We don't get a lot of holidays off," James said. "We have 30 rabbits, and they'll be going in and out all day Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday."
Ward's offers a wide range of theatrical makeup. Buyers range from clowns and amateur actors to safety workers putting together disaster drills, and James sometimes finds herself giving out unusual advice.
"We're the professionals," James said with a grin. "We can explain how to make it look gory."
Clown conventions have become a year-round business. The store sets up exhibits at five or six conventions a year across the country, and it has professional clown customers from as far away as Hawaii.
"We'll a get call from a clown who likes a certain kind of eyelashes or a certain brand of makeup and they can't find it anywhere else," she said. "We can mail it out, or we can bring it to the convention for them."
History
Ward's Costume got its start in 1949 when Laura Ward, the owner's mother, opened a small costume shop in the basement of her Warren home with her sister-in-law Anne Johnson. James remembers customers arriving at all hours of the day and night to browse through the costume choices or pick up an order.
Costume rentals then averaged $1 or $2 -- now Ward's charges between $10 and $60 for a rental, still moderate, the owner said, compared to the rates charged in larger cities.
As a teenager, James earned spending money waiting on customers and sewing costumes for her mother's shop. She continued working at the store even after starting a full-time job in 1972 as a line worker at Packard Electric Corp., now Delphi Packard Electric Systems.
By 1978 the owners moved the store to a commercial building on Vienna Avenue in Niles, and in 1991 it moved again to its present location on South Main Street in downtown Niles.
James bought the business when her mother retired. She still works the midnight shift at Delphi Packard and spends her days running the store with her husband, Ray, and help from their three adult children, Farrah, Chuck and Jonathan.
"I've never been a person who requires a lot of sleep," she said.
vinarsky@vindy.com