FOCUS ON: THE MAD HATTER
An indie which truly stands out at Halloween is The Mad Hatter in Yeovil, Somerset. Having taken over the business a year ago, David Rose is working hard to turn the shop into a destination for all things spooky.
T
he Mad Hatter has been trading for over 35 years, but in October last year, current owner, David Rose, bought the business. Before acquiring the store, David’s career was in corporate retail, with no direct experience of running a costume shop, but you wouldn’t know that when looking at his plans for the business. Having taken over just a week before Halloween 2021, this year is his first real chance to provide a Halloween shop for his customers and he has big plans for the month of October and beyond. Above the main shop is a twofloor flat, which has been transformed into a Horror Shop, helping to make the costume shop a true destination store for horror fans. David tells us: “Last week someone came from Brighton to go into it. Someone this week turned up from Cardiff, because there’s nowhere else around for them. We get people from all over the UK coming to us. 36
L E S T H T OP IL
“We started to build the horror shop from January. It’s a Victorian building, which helps with the atmosphere and the look of it being so old helps to fit it in as being a Halloween horror shop.” A visit to the Horror Shop is designed to be an experience which gets people talking. David continues: “We get the biggest blokes go up to the Horror Shop Above: The window display changes three times a year, with a Christmas window, a Halloween window and a more general window. Right: The Horror Shop has been in development since January this year. Below: The Mad Hatter is trialling a toy shop with classic novelty toys.
and you can hear them scream like a teenage girl within a few minutes. You don’t get that when you’re shopping online. Whereas when you get the eerie music in the background and you’re walking around the corner and a prop spider jumps out at you, it makes it an experience. Even if those people are not there to buy anything, they’ll tell their friends, who might be absolute Halloween nuts.” While David is in the business of scaring customers who love horror, he’s making sure the store is also a family affair: “This year we’ve also taken a room we were using as a toy shop and put all the Halloween bits in there, so that people with young kids who don’t want to go upstairs and scare them, can still shop the range.” The product offering is key in getting people through the door, but also in developing the online presence of the retailer. Far from offering just costumes, accessories and run of the mill décor, The Mad Hatter has a wide range of animated props and niche Halloween products. A new website is being developed to help drive the online sales. David explains: “In the next year, I definitely want to build that online presence. For general costumes, there’s loads of online places, but for the proper props, there’s only a couple of places online and only one up North that I know of with an actual shop. “Online Halloween orders have started already for the bigger animated props. We do have regulars who shop online, but while looking at a picture is fine, a lot of people want to get their hands
OCTOBER 2022 PROGRESSIVE PARTY EUROPE
36-37_The Mad Hatter.indd 1
30/09/2022 17:47