The Business of Boo!

Fire up those chain saws!

It’s that time of year again, when fodder for some of your most fun and picturesque business features is rising from the dead.

This season, forget the same-old Halloween costume-shop story and instead immerse yourself in the eerie world of professional haunters.

Part subculture, part business, part performance art, the U.S. fright industry has thousands of venues and an estimated annual revenue approaching half a billion dollars.

Haunters plot year-round for their brief fall seasons, lining up actors, special effects make-up artists, props and costumes, audio-visual aids and even specialty Web site creators. Tickets, flyers, food concessions, portable toilets – the haunts spawn all sorts of spin-off revenue.

If you’re near a major theme park, it’s no secret that they’re trying to stretch their seasons with spooky October nights. Give readers a behind-the-scenes transition, special supplies and other preparations that take a park from wholesome to hoary.

Other business angles: Sales of ads in specialty directories, fright-night tourism, suppliers and ancillary autumn attractions cider mills, corn mazes and hayrides. Scrutinize the haunts as you would any other business: What are the trends in ticket prices? Pay? Insurance – how do you figure the liability at a haunted house, anyway? Do zombies qualify for workers compensation?
If you’re thinking to yourself “But there are still three weeks until Halloween,” think again. Most haunts open in late September now and a few run “encore” weekends after All Hallows’ Eve itself. To make the most of behind-the-scenes video, audio and slide-shows, as well as give your graphics folks time to prepare interactive maps, etc., it’s none too soon to pay a call on these ghoulish entrepreneurs.

Here are a plethora of resources to get you started; keep in mind not all haunters pay for placement in directories so dig around (pun intended) for the ones that haven’t yet become your regions’ media darlings.

Attend rehearsals and take notes of the nitty-gritty reality behind the screams. What do they spend each season on make-up, hair spray, fake blood and circular-saw blades? What are the trends in haunt themes? Pirates? Harry Potter-esque wizardry? Slasher-flick gore? More live actors? More interactive vignettes? How are they working kid-friendly hours and toned-down tours for the younger set?

Are any going year-round? If not, what do the haunters do for day jobs? The living dead are just crawling with human interest stories.

Here are some industry resources to get you started:

HauntWorld, an online directory with interactive maps.
Haunted House Magazine
Haunted House Association
Haunted House.com
Haunting Industry Network
HauntersNetwork.com
HauntingIndustryDirectory.com
Hauntmax.com, a specialty Web site provider.

And if you really get hooked, mark your calendar for next year’s TransWorld Halloween trade show, Feb. 26-March 1 in Chicago. It features product exhibits, trade seminars and the famous costume fashion show.

Come back to Your Daily Tipsheet each morning for advice on where to find sources, background and creative ways to make financial news and trends relevant to your audience.

Golf to the Fore

Biz news has been pretty heavy lately, so let’s take a breather and focus on a picturesque weekend feature.

According to numerous event calendars, August is National Golf Month. I realize these industry "holidays" are phony and manufactured, but they come in pretty handy sometimes as a news peg for a worthwhile but rather orphaned story idea.

The ubiquitous sport of golf is a likely pick that generates a lot of spending in most areas and is flush with novel spin-off possibilities. According to the National Golf Foundation, it’s a $75 billion-a-year industry in the United States – and that sounds low to me given the NGF claims that more than 28 million players a year hit nearly the nation’s nearly 16,000 golf courses.

Your state’s travel and tourism department likely can come up with an estimate of golf’s impact on the local economy. Besides the NGF, the industry-sponsored Golf 20/20 site focuses on the sport’s financial impact and offers myriad studies and reports as well as a directory of state-level affiliates. Golf Digest magazine online provides up-to-date industry news and trends.

Talk with local vendors about how they’re coping with this year’s grim economy, or to ferret out small business and career features. Pro shops, instructors, equipment dealers and manufacturers, golf course design and landscaping specialists, municipal golf course managers and vendors of supplies from food to fertilizer are just a handful of the ideas that come to mind.

If you like trend stories, find out whether courses in your area are keeping pace with competitors providing catering and banquet services for weddings and other non-golf events. Are they doing double duty, switching to cross-country ski routes in winter to maximize their seasons?

Another competitive angle: Many country clubs and courses are cutting dues, offering incentives to lure junior members and otherwise responding to their clientele’s financial straits. What are the hot discounts and promotions in your area, and are they working?
Play Golf America, a sort of information coalition sponsored by various leagues, also highlights corporate golf – surely that’s big business. It also features resources for golfers with disabilities – an area I haven’t seen explored yet. Even blind individuals play golf and there are trainers who specialize in helping handicapped people learn the game. The site includes a zip-code search function for many of its channels, so you can find local experts and providers easily.

If you’re covering the work-life beat, how about reviewing the notion of golf as a career? The Professional Golf Management program developed in conjunction with the PGA of America and offered at 20 universities nationwide touts 100 percent job placement. Doing what, they don’t quite say.

Or, take a look at golf as a career-builder in your business community. I’ve often felt at a disadvantage because not playing the game costs me a number of professional networking opportunities each year; you might talk with career coaches, management experts and the like about whether strolling the links with the boss really does help boost one up the corporate ladder. This 2008 survey www.CIO.com, the site for IT executives, says golf is over-rated as a way to chum up with business colleagues, but I’m not sure I buy it – especially for sales people and others who trade heavily on relationships.

Come back to Your Daily Tipsheet each morning for advice on where to find sources, background and creative ways to make financial news and trends relevant to your audience.

Earning, Saving & Spending

Personal income and spending reports are due out at 8:30 a.m. Monday from the Bureau of Economic Analysis – the same folks who brought us Friday’s advance GDP report, which showed that the nation’s economy still was contracting in the second quarter of 2009, but at a slower pace.

The personal income and outlay release uses aggregated numbers for the entire country, so it’s not a great source of nitty-gritty salary detail. Read the May 2009 edition, on the Web site now, for a look at the format and data that will be updated Tuesday with June results.

While very macro, it’s still a decent springboard for doing a grassroots story about household earning and savings trends. (The BEA report assumes that the different between income and outlay equals individual savings, so that figure is part of the monthly report.)

People never, and I mean never, get tired of reading about wages – their own and other workers. And this summer, story angles about household income abound. Aside from the obvious jobless-related approach, many employed workers are taking a pay cut as companies and governments adopt the practice of using unpaid furloughs to cut costs. Check into how widespread this practice is and what the ripple effects are in your area.

It’s not all bad news. Remember that many employees are seeing a few extra stimulus dollars in their checks – how are they spending them? Paying down debt, saving or splurging? You can ask workers themselves, keeping in mind that the real frugalities are home washing out used Ziploc bags and not spending in the public venues like malls and restaurants where you usually find ‘real people’ for your stories. Try to catch people in money-neutral locations – parks, the library, etc., to get a balanced sampling.

Also talk with local banks and credit unions about trends they are seeing. Check with payroll managers – are more workers hustling to retire 401(k) loans or having savings automatically debited right from their checks? Giant payroll processors like ADP and PayChex offers some tidbits in their media centers; it’s worth a call to them or smaller regional providers to see if they can comment on payroll trends.

We also just had a federal minimum wage increase to $7.25 per hour, effective July 24. (Keep in mind that some states’ higher minimums supersede the federal rate; here’s a list from the Department of Labor.) Minimum and living wages are controversial topics, especially among small business owners, so there’s another angle for you.

Come back to Your Daily Tipsheet each morning for advice on where to find sources, background and creative ways to make financial news and trends relevant to your audience.