Halloween Shopping Trends 2025: A POD Seller's Guide

If you sell print-on-demand (POD) products, you've probably already picked your Halloween bestsellers: pumpkins, ghosts, witches, "spooky season" mugs and tees. But most sellers are building their entire Halloween catalog around costumes and decor, while missing an activity that 66% of Americans actually plan to do this year. Skip that gap, and you're leaving orders on the table during one of the busiest shopping months of Q4. The good news: the National Retail Federation's 2025 Halloween survey lays out exactly how shoppers behave this season, and that data points to a few product ideas most stores haven't touched yet.

Halloween Spending Is Hitting a Record $13.1 Billion in 2025

Halloween spending in the US is projected to reach $13.1 billion in 2025, according to the National Retail Federation's 2025 consumer survey, up from $11.6 billion the year before. That's not a one-off spike - Halloween spending has grown almost every year since the pandemic, and per-person spending has now reached a record $114.45.

This matters for sellers because a bigger overall pie usually means more room for niche products to find buyers, even in a crowded category. Shoppers aren't just holding onto last year's decorations; a large share plan to buy Halloween items across several categories in the same season, which is why understanding what they're buying - not just how much they're spending - is the more useful signal for a product lineup.

How Americans Actually Celebrate Halloween

Handing out candy is the single most common Halloween activity in the US, with 66% of participants planning to do it in 2025 - well ahead of dressing up in costume (51%) and decorating the home or yard (51%). Carving a pumpkin (46%), throwing or attending a party (33%), and visiting a haunted house (25%) round out the list.

This ranking is worth sitting with for a moment. Most Halloween POD collections are built around the second and third most popular activities - costumes and decor - while the most popular one, giving out candy, barely shows up as a dedicated product category. That's a gap, not a coincidence: candy-related shopping doesn't feel as "designable" as a costume, so fewer sellers have built a collection around it.

Where Shoppers Get Their Halloween Ideas and Where They Buy

Online search is the number one source of Halloween inspiration, cited by 37% of shoppers, ahead of in-store browsing (27%) and recommendations from friends or family (21%). In other words, the competition for a Halloween sale increasingly happens on a search bar: Google, Etsy, Amazon, or TikTok before it ever happens at checkout.

On the buying side, discount stores remain the top destination at 42% of shoppers (up five points from last year), while specialty Halloween stores and online retailers each account for 31%. That online share is the one that matters most for POD sellers: shoppers who buy online are more likely to be searching for something a big-box store doesn't stock, which is exactly the kind of niche, personalized product a POD store is built to sell.

One more figure explains why Halloween keeps growing despite economic pressure: 33% of Americans rank Halloween as their favorite holiday of the year, according to the NRF/Prosper survey - a level of emotional attachment that holds up even though 79% of shoppers expect higher prices this year because of tariffs. People are willing to spend on a holiday they genuinely love, even while being more price-conscious about how they spend.

The Overlooked Opportunity: Candy-Giving Products

Handing out candy has the highest participation rate of any Halloween activity, yet it's a need that most POD sellers still skip over. That gap is exactly where a smaller store can compete without going head-to-head with the big decor and costume listings that already dominate search results.

A few product ideas that speak directly to this activity:

• Porch decor built around trick-or-treaters arriving at the door, not just general "spooky" themes

• "Trick or Treat" welcome signs for the porch or front yard

• Candy bowl station signs (a small, personalized detail that's easy to produce and easy to gift)

• Personalized treat bags for kids going trick-or-treating, which can double as a family or neighborhood keepsake

None of these require a big production catalog - a doormat, a small yard sign, a printed tote - which keeps them well suited to a print-on-demand workflow. Sometimes the biggest sales opportunity in a season isn't the flashiest product; it's the one built around the activity people are actually doing most.

Turning This Data Into a Halloween Product Strategy

Start with the activity, not the aesthetic. Instead of asking "what Halloween design should I make next," ask which of the six activities in the NRF data: candy, costumes, decor, pumpkin carving, parties, haunted houses, your current catalog is missing, then build toward that gap. This is the same logic behind picking hot dropshipping niches for 2026: match the product to a real, high-frequency behavior rather than a general theme.

Since online search drives more Halloween shopping than any other channel, listing titles, tags, and product descriptions matter as much as the design itself. A well-designed candy bowl sign that isn't discoverable in search won't sell any better than a generic pumpkin tee. Pair strong SEO on your own listings with visibility on TikTok, where seasonal products can ride short-form video into search and shopping feeds at the same time - the same approach covered in this guide to trending products on TikTok.

With 79% of shoppers bracing for higher prices, price-sensitive framing helps too, think small, affordable add-ons (a $6 welcome sign) rather than only high-ticket decor sets. And because Halloween is really the opening round of Q4, it's worth treating it as a test bed: use it to test and validate a hero SKU before Black Friday and Christmas demand hits. The same seasonal-behavior approach applies to other calendar moments too, from Halloween all the way to seasonal niches like Mother's Day, the pattern of "match the product to the actual activity" repeats across the year.

If Halloween performs well, don't let the momentum drop once November starts. A full holiday strategy that carries shoppers from Halloween into the winter holidays tends to outperform treating each occasion as a standalone campaign, and a few simple moves can also help boost your holiday season sales once the wider Q4 rush begins.

FAQ

• What is the most popular Halloween activity in the US for 2025?
  Handing out candy is the most popular activity, with 66% of participants planning to do it, ahead of dressing up in costume and decorating the home (both at 51%), according to the NRF's 2025 survey.

• How much are Americans expected to spend on Halloween in 2025?
  Total Halloween spending is projected to reach $13.1 billion, with per-person spending at a record $114.45.

• What Halloween products should POD sellers focus on for 2025?
  Beyond the usual costumes and decor, there's real, underserved demand around candy-giving: porch decor, "Trick or Treat" welcome signs, candy bowl station signs, and personalized treat bags for kids.

• Where do most Halloween shoppers find product inspiration?
  Online search is the top source of inspiration at 37%, according to the NRF survey, which means emarketer.com's analysis of nearly half of shoppers starting before October is also useful context, search visibility matters earlier in the season than most sellers assume.

Key Takeaway

The NRF's 2025 data shows Halloween shopping is bigger than ever, but the most popular activity, giving out candy, is also the most underserved in most POD catalogs. Building even a small collection around that behavior, and making sure it's easy to find in search, is a low-effort way to capture demand your competitors are overlooking. If you're scaling Halloween or holiday-season products on TikTok Shop and want help getting the right ad account and campaign setup in place, reach out to the Ecomdy team to talk through your next steps.