Check Out These Pawesome Costumes For Halloween
FOXBusiness.com’s Serena Elavia visits the PetSmart Halloween fashion show to see the new costume collection.
Every year Americans spend billions of dollars on their pets across a variety of categories like health care, apparel, food and accessories. This year, more than 171 million Americans will celebrate Halloween by spending approximately $8.4 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. And a significant portion of that money is being spent on pets, with 16% of parents expected to dress their furry family members in costume this year.
To prepare for the holiday, PetSmart hosts a fashion show to showcase the upcoming collection of costumes for pets. The retailer invites numerous social media famous “doglebrities” like Chloe the Mini Frenchie, Samson the Doodle and Tinkerbelle the Dog. These pets have thousands of followers on Instagram (NASDAQ:FB) and attend the event to model the new collection.
Mardi Larson, the director of consumer PR for PetSmart, tells FOXBusiness.com that the most popular costumes for pets are the “walker” costumes, which make the animals look like they have human legs. These can come in a variety of forms including cowboys and cowgirls.
The cowgirl costume is a favorite of Tinkerbelle the Dog’s, who boasts over 80,000 followers on Instagram. Chloe the Mini Frenchie, who has over 140,000 Instagram followers, wore a lobster costume for the pet fashion show. Her owner, Loni Edwards, says that Chloe’s followers love any picture of her in a costume, making Halloween a perfect time of year to post them.
Larson says that regardless of the holiday, parents really want to involve their pet by shopping for them and dressing them up. And millennials take special care of their pets on Halloween; According to the NRF, one in five millennials will dress their pets up this Halloween compared to 13% of average adults.