For most people, Halloween comes but once a year. For Joanne Crockett, Halloween is a year-round affair, even during Christmas.
Crockett is the sole proprietor — and sole employee — of a an online retail store, Vampire Wear (http://www.vampirewear.com) that offers Goths, bikers, and their friends and supporters clothing and jewelry with a vampiric theme.
Obviously sales peak for Halloween. Crockett reported a 50% jump in orders in the last week of September and the first week of October alone. But, she added, around Christmas, a lot of parents buy for the children.
“One guy bought T-shirts for his children because he was tired of their stealing his,” Crockett said.
While for some the scariest aspect of Vampire Wear may be the thought that Goth has been around long enough to spawn a bono fide second generation, others may find the products, customer base and life style amusing.
Based in Mississauga, Ontario, just outside Toronto, Crockett offers her fellow Goths black T-shirts with such slogans as “Let Us Prey” over a picture of a row of teeth with canine fangs or “University of Transylvania.” Jewelry lines include the shapes and images of wolf’s heads, vampire bats and human hand or foot bones. Another line offers clear vials filled with some unspecified dark red substance. She also sells custom fangs.
Typically, Crockett fills 40 orders a week, each order coming to more than $30(US). She added that her customer base is about half and half male and female. She can tell either from the names or the orders. Men, it seems, like longer necklaces.
Most of her orders are from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, with her own country, Canada, coming in third. Half her orders are from repeat customers.
Customers find Vampire Wear through ads or links from such Goth-centric media as Rue Morgue and Gothic Beauty. She also participates in such Goth-related events as Toronto’s Festival of Fear, held yearly in the early fall.
While Crockett’s interest in Goth in general and vampires in particular are long standing, the actual inspiration for Crockett’s three-year-old company came out of a vacation in Australia. She found a souvenir T-shirt saying, “I survived a shark attack” that was manufactured with a shark bite taken out of it. She began thinking about doing something similar, but with a vampire bite.
Her marketing plan was developed from reading books about guerilla marketing. However, the do-it-yourself approach does have limits. As a one-woman operation, she found dealing with NAFTA regulations overwhelming and could not send boxes of T-shirts to a biker event in Arizona.
Crockett’s future plans call for creating jewelry lines that are more mainstream. Jewelry is not only her most popular product, it is also the product she likes to develop the most.
She has already launched a “Nordic” line: necklaces with pendants marked with the runes for “love” or “strength” or “warrior.” She also hopes to expand into custom jewelry.
“People really like jewelry that means something to them,” Crockett said.
Network
