The June issue of Progressive Party Europe is available to read now, packed full of great content including in-depth supplier interviews, industry news and opinions, product updates and much more.
For a time of year when the party industry is supposed to be minding its own business and ticking along quite nicely, there has been an awful lot going on over the past few months.
The big news – perhaps the biggest we’ve seen in the UK and Europe party market for a number of years – is the recent announcement that US party retail chain Party City has opened a store on this side of the Atlantic.
The shop will open in Dublin’s Liffey Valley retail park this Saturday 8 June and will be run on a day-to-day basis by Creative Retail – the team behind the seasonal Halloween HQ pop-up shops (which will continue to exist in their own right). See our news story for more information. PPE will be paying a trip to the first Party City store outside of North America shortly so stay tuned for more on that.
Elsewhere in the news, the government has announced that plastic straws will be banned from the UK from next April; much sooner than the industry was expecting. While straws and straw accessories are only a peripheral product for most party suppliers and retailers, the underlying message behind the story is perhaps more significant; signalling the wider consumer movement which is taking place.
In the meantime, of course, this is the time of year when party consumers are either going on hen and stag parties or planning for their summer festivals. Either way, it’s great for business and both markets should keep retailers busy enough until the end of the summer, when things will start winding down in time for Halloween (now just four months away and counting…).
According to this issue’s extensive Halloween feature, there’s a huge amount of new product on the market for 2019 – much of it bolstered by a few key cinema releases which will be making their big screen debut in the run-up to Halloween. Remakes of classic horror films Child’s Play and Pet Semetary are both launching this month, while IT: Chapter II will be released in September.
Of course for the party industry this means just one thing – bring on the clowns! (and zombie pets and killer dolls and undead mutants…)
As ever, please drop us a line with any news, views or anything else you’d like us to look at in the future. Enjoy!
