Would you like to be king for a day?


Its possible at Broadway Costume Co., located at 924 W. Second on the fringe of downtown Spokane. After paying a $20 to $85 rental fee, you could outfit yourself as the Duke of Windsor, masquerade as the king of rock n roll, Elvis Presley, or assume the garb or another notable person.


Youre not drawn to royalty? Do you see yourself more as a monk or a cavalryman? Well, knock yourself out.


Store owner John Mosby says Broadway Costume currently carries about 650 costumes, depicting characters ranging from Sherlock Holmes and George Washington to Scarlett OHara and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. The shop also rents wigs, hats, and other accessories. Some of its most popular costumes include its Three Musketeers outfit, jesters garb, and Elizabethan-era dresses, he says.


Sorry, Star Wars fans, but you wont find a Darth Vader, Princess Leia, or Chewbacca outfit at Broadway Costume. Fred and Wilma Flintstone costumes also are out of the question because of the royalty fees that must be paid for each of them.


The royalty fees can be anywhere from $200 to $300 on top of the cost of the costume, and that just makes the rental price so high, Mosby says.


Gearing up for Halloween


Mosby says Broadway Costume, which he opened in September 1996, buys about 350 costumes each year and hopes to build up an inventory of more than 1,000 costumes by next Halloween. He attends trade shows during February and March and orders the custom-made costumes, which are delivered in August and September.


Mosby, who also is the owner of a Spokane-based tuxedo-rental chain called Mr. Tux, says he decided to open the costume shop after he had tried other businesses, such as a mens formal-wear store and a bridal shop, in the same West Second space, which is next to a Mr. Tux store. After those ventures failed to meet his expectations, he decided to find a business that would thrive when the tuxedo business typically slows for Mr. Tux. That period is during the month of Octoberjust in time for Halloween, which is the costume shops busiest holiday.


The whole object was to find a product that would fill a market niche here and generate some cash flow during the off times of the tux business, Mosby says. He declines to disclose the costume companys annual revenue, but says, So far, my expectations have come very close to being met.


The only disappointment for Mosby occurred this past Halloween, when some of the companys costumes sat unused, hanging on the racks. He says that the year earlier, every costume in the shop had been rented by Halloween, so he decided he didnt have to advertise the following year.


He learned from the lesson. Broadway Costume already has a marketing plan in mind for next Halloween, Mosby says.


After Halloween is over, the shops business picks up again around Christmas, as people rent both Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus suits, and then again around Mardi Gras and Easter, which lead into the busy prom season for the tux-rental business. The costume company also rents costumes to theater companies in Coeur dAlene and Kettle Falls, Wash., during the summer months.


As Broadway Costume builds up its inventory, Mosby plans to develop a catalog that would be available at the eight other Mr. Tux shops he owns. He envisions those shops setting up a costume display, then allowing customers to request a particular costume from the catalog.


The costumes that customers rent would be trucked to the various tuxedo shops from the Second Avenue store here. Mosby owns four Mr. Tux shops in Spokane, and one each in Coeur dAlene, Kennewick, Wenatchee, Missoula, and Kalispell.


To keep track of the costumes, Mosby plans next year to begin placing a scannable bar code on each one. To accommodate costumes, Mosby will have to rewrite the bar-code software program that the Mr. Tux shops use to track tuxedos.


At this point its not cost effective to rewrite the computer program, Mosby says. He adds, however, that it will become cost effective to do that once the shop has accumulated more than 1,000 costumes.


A natural fit


Mosby says that operating the neighboring tux- and costume-rental shops seem to be a natural fit. Both businesses rent out high-quality garments, which can be dry-cleaned in Mr. Tuxs dry-cleaning plant, which is in the same building as both businesses. The Mr. Tux outlet, the costume shop, and the dry-cleaning plant occupy a total of 16,000 square feet of space on Second Avenue here.


The affiliated businesses also share employees. There are about seven people who work in the Mr. Tux and Broadway Costume showrooms, which are connected by a doorway. Mosby says he employs a total of 43 people companywide.


Though the operations seem to fill separate niches, occasionally they experience some overlap. While most people customarily visit a tux shop when theyre looking for wedding attire, some brides and grooms have gone to the tux shop and ended up renting costumes to wear during their ceremonies.


This past Halloween, two different wedding parties cast aside the traditional bridal gowns and tuxes and instead donned more festive attire. At one of the ceremonies, the entire wedding party, as well as the bride and groom, wore jesters costumes. At the other wedding, the groomsmen dressed in garb that resembled the clothing worn by the Three Musketeers, while the bridesmaids assumed dresses that looked as if they had been worn by Robin Hoods sweetheart, Maid Marian. The bride and groom wore Shakespearean garb.


The phone rings off the hook at Halloween with people requesting all types of costumes, Mosby says. And boy, let me tell you, you get some weird ones.