To think it's silly that shops are already replacing Halloween stock with Christmas stock?

Also bare shelves increases customers who dump stuff. Look when a shop closes down.

@AliceMaforethought The psychology behind shops playing Xmas music has gone. It used to increase sales, make customers happy. No, it makes customers want to leave the store and they are sympathising with staff. When I worked for a supermarket, I had to switch the Christmas music off in my head. When customers said "does this music drive you mad?" I bloody heard it then!

I started before the store opened or worked later after the store closed for a week before Christmas. The music was still playing on the tannoy. Manager taped down the button on the kiosk mic, (as music stopped when the mic was in use) and it was lovely. Asked one manager could we do this all the time. No he said as if someone from HQ visited, which was quite often in Dec, we would got told off.

Yes I did read the OP but, as I said in my later post, I don't think that one person presumably not in the shop and monitoring activity for the whole day, can reliably state that no one was interested in the Christmas stuff. They can't wait for all the Halloween stuff to be gone before putting out the Christmas stuff, Yesterday was the last Saturday before Halloween so they sold the remaining tatt off cheap while making way for the Christmas stuff (which probably creates up to 50% of their annual profits, making it a far bigger deal that Halloween). The fact that the OP didn't notice anyone buying any Christmas stuff in the 50 minutes she was in the store (!) means precisely nothing.

If I had my way, I would ban anything Christmas related until the last week of November. No decorations, food, etc. I would make an exception for birds and things being pre-ordered, but no Christmas stuff in the shops cluttering up the shelves, and no Christmas music, either.

Only in the shop the OP was in it seems.
In other shops I have been in recently people appear to be buying lots of Christmas stuff already.
Some Christmas products in The Works have been and sold already. I went back to buy some last week and they had sold out already.

Did you actually read the OP? People weren't interested in the Christmas stuff!

Lack of shelf and stockroom space for the Christmas stock that's already arrived in store - that needs to be out on the shelves because there's no where else for it to go.
Plus from a psychological point of view shelves with spread out "leftovers" looks bad to customers and puts them off.
Stock shoved together to look like there is more there than they're actually is makes customers think they are missing a bargain if they don't rummage.
It's just the way retail is.

I love this (the tree the day before) ♥️

In our village, there will only be a knock on peoples doors if there is a lit-up pumpkin in the window (or on the doorstep.) No-one knocks on doors otherwise. Guess it depends where you live. We live in a quiet rural village, where the children are very well behaved.

Some people just sling it and start again. Which shows that either are loaded or have poor money management.

Fact I have NOTHING of Halloween at home. Doorbell will be switched off on Friday as where I live, get the teens who don't make the effort to get dressed in Halloween costumes, come round people's houses wearing their black n grey tracksuits basically begging for money.

They will have received their full delivery of Halloween goods at least a week or two ago because they don’t want any left by Friday. Unlike Christmas, putting decorations up for Halloween is more niche and enthusiasts will have mostly already bought them. They don’t want to be left with excess stock

I was in my local Range this morning, and noticed the same thing. I was just going in for a browse, as I haven't been there in ages. I've no interest whatsoever in Halloween, but like you, noticed it was pretty much all confined to one display near the entrance, mixed in with some Autumn/Thanksgiving stuff, and the rest higgledy-piggledy on some shelves near the back of the shop.
The rest of the shop was like Christmas had vomited all over it.

There's a Home Bargains on the same retail park, and they had a much more organised Halloween section still, with a lot of people looking. But that was a single aisle. Christmas had about 4-5 aisles.

I suspect half-term has played a role in Halloween feeling "done" already... People want to do parties and the like during the half term week, which for a lot of places was last week.

Simple, after a certain date, the stores do not get any more deliveries of Halloween crap, so stock Xmas lines over Halloween lines that have sold out or condense the display. So if an item is displayed 4 wide, they can reduce the width to 2 if they have less than a certain number of stock.

Then a couple of days before Christmas, we condensed the Xmas stuff and start putting out seasonal stuff. Which was usually bedding and cookware.

Source - 17 years of working in retail.

Some people near us have some really horrible goulish decorations up outside their house. I wish they wouldn't do it. We're having to walk a different route to town because their decorations really are the stuff of nightmares (mutilated dolls and stuff)

Yuk

Glad to see the back of it.

@Cantheowneroftheredcorsapleasemovetheircar shops don't want stock left over that has to be reduced after the event.
They want it sold and gone.

I think Halloween is a massive pain for retailers. When I worked in retail in the early 90s as a student, the local chamber of commerce set the date for the Christmas decorations to go up and it was always the second weekend in October. I’ve spent my whole life listening to people insist that Christmas gets earlier every year but it genuinely doesn’t. In fact, if anything it is a bit later as shops try to square the circle of moving from Halloween to Christmas.

They absolutely don't. I had this exact same scenario on Friday only in a different shop. I was looking to buy some Halloween stuff that was blocked off by a huge metal case full of Christmas stock. I couldn't get near the Halloween stuff so I left without buying anything. How on earth does that make sense? They lost out on sales, I doubt I was the only one who left without buying.

Retailers got wise. So many people used to wait until the last minute to get decorations for Christmas or some other event assuming prices would be lowered, they used to be but are not now. You have to buy in advance.

I disagree. Most people I know buy things in advance. Usually at the beginning of October is when I start to see houses being decorated. And when I was in The Range the other day, (buying a Christmas tree 😬) there was one small table of Halloween stuff there, with not much left. Maybe the store you were in wasn’t representative of all of their stores.

My kids are older now so I don’t have Halloween decorations anymore - I just have a few autumnal things that get used year after year and a light up plastic pumpkin from when they were little that I put outside the door for the trick or treaters to know to knock.

OK, but people will have been drawn to the bargains. It's because it is cheap. From a personal perspective my dc are late teens and I'm pretty sure Halloween decs weren't the massive deal they are now when they were small. We bought normal sweets for trick or treating, costumes and a pumpkin. That was it. I find it a bit excessive now and feel I wouldn't buy it even if my kids were small. BUT, if they were small and I saw stuff being sold off for a couple of quid, I probably would get sucked in - 'Oh, only £1.99 for a cute little ceramic ghost/pumpkin...' Then I'd be grumpy because annoyed at myself and crowded shops don't bring out the best in anyone do they?

The reason that there are seldom cheap eggs being sold off after Easter anymore etc is because the shops have got a lot better at predicting how much they will sell and have better stock control software and suchlike (I don't work in retail so no idea of the details), but it is because they have got better at maximising their profits, not because the sillies have forgotten that we all love a bargain after the event and they are now foolishly missing out on those sales. They put the stuff out early because they know it will result in many people buying twice as they eat stuff early and have to rebuy.

YANBU to be disappointed that it doesn't work the way you preferred it anymore, but YABU to think it's because the shops are missing a trick.