Susan Stringer needs to make clear one thing about her business, Beauty and the Beast Costumes.
"The name of my shop does not come from Disney," she says heartily, noting that she opened in 1989 -- two years before the Disney animated movie.
"Once, when I was nine or 10, I was staying with my grandmother. The classic French (film) version of Beauty and the Beast, from the 1940s, came on TV. Even in black-and-white, the costumes were so amazing, beautiful and ornate," she says.
Stringer says she was 12 when her grandmother taught her to sew. Years later, she and her husband, Jeff, regularly attended science-fiction/comic-book fan conventions at which attendees dressed as favorite characters -- always in costumes she'd made.
"We won more awards over the years than we can count -- and we were the [first] to win four straight best-in-shows at [Atlanta's] DragonCon," she says.
Stringer says she launched Beauty and the Beast that after graduating from Chattanooga State Community College and spending most of the 1980s working as a data processor.
"Hated working in a cubicle," she says. "I opened my costume shop so I could do what I loved.
"My mom said, 'I'll fund this screwball idea for six months, through Halloween [1989],'" she recalls. "We started out with a six-month lease, $3,000 in seed money and all the costumes my mom, grandmother and I could make in the three months before Halloween -- but it worked."
Having cleared that initial hurdle, Stringer says, they moved their original Hixson Pike store to the Dayton Boulevard space they occupy today. To this day, Stringer adds, she and her mom, Mary A. Fugate, are co-owners of the business.
"Thousands" is the best Stringer can do in terms of recalling how many costumes she's made over the years. Her handmade creations, which she rents but doesn't sell, dominate the main room of her shop.
"Our stuff is unique," she says. "I'm very picky about the costumes I sell. Every business in the world says this, but I try to find the best quality at reasonable prices."
Stringer estimates that Beauty and the Beast grosses between $150,000 and $200,000 in a typical year. Halloween sales are "enough to pay the bills," she says.
"Thirty to 50 percent of our annual sales come in October," she says. "The majority of my Halloween business is adults -- if Halloween falls on a weekend, sales are much larger. If it falls Monday through Thursday, that's fewer adult parties.
"Plus," she adds, "most adults don't realize I have kids' costumes. They take their kids to chain stores."
Halloween aside, Stringer says, it's her "niche" that gets her in the black in a good year.
"School plays is kind of my icing on the cake," she says. "Last year, I had three plays in October. That was very unusual, and just crazy."
Stringer says that, as do most costumers, she and her mom make a single, large annual buy each February. Stringer says theirs is usually $30,000 to $40,000 but, with the global pandemic looming in 2019 and arriving in 2020, they bought almost nothing in either year.
"In February of 2019, we were just hearing about COVID," she says. "The media was telling us that if it got here, people could be quarantined and it could last a year or two.
"We ordered some makeup, hats and accessories [in 2019], but zero costumes, because if we buy it and then can't sell it, we're sunk. ... Halloween that year was sad."
Halloween 2020 was better, Stringer says, because "people were sick and tired of being told what to do." She says Halloween 2021 was "gangbusters, all-out," and her annual buy this past February was back to normal.
"I think it'll be a good year," she says.
Photography by Matt Hamilton / Costumes for sale and rental are available at Beauty and the Beast Costumes on Dayton Boulevard.