>

to paraphrase someone from a related thread in r/Austin : "If that space makes $10k per month selling costumes, but it could make $40k per month leased out to become an Apple Store... the real marvel is that they stayed in the costume business this long"
EDIT TO ADD: I see what you're saying, that somebody else could continue the LSD name in another location. To which I'd say, nope, Austin rents are too high to open a business like LSD now. I also learned LSD's owner had several other buildings on SoCo and was making more money as a commercial landlord than in selling costumes. 
Assuming she was at least 25 when she opened LSD, 38 years in business would make her at least 63 now. Like I said -- makes perfect sense to sell her building now, while ATX real estate prices are at all-time highs. They moved into "all sales final" mode in like August, they had 4 or 5 months to sell as much inventory as possible. Probably went into "fire sale mode" for Black Friday and stayed there, slashing prices by half or more, they wanted those shelves empty or close to it by the time they closed for good.
So, no building and little/no inventory. Just a clever name and some contacts. Anyone who wanted to get into the costume biz might as well just buy a Spirit Halloween franchise & keep things simple
Maybe selling the same shit you can get at Dollar Tree with 1000% markup wasn't the best business idea. >

This right here. It was all cheap garbage with a markup. Then people used to go there for halloween costumes and Spirit Halloween flooded the market. >

I hope American halloween culture evolves to the point where we can have a high quality more expensive seasonal halloween store to compete with the shittiness of Spirit Halloween. Like the Whole Foods to their Walmart. 
No, I'm not still mad about how hard it was to find a cool costume last year that wasn't either incredibly cheap and crappy or incredibly overpriced, why do you ask? >

The problem is people don’t want to spend much on an outfit they will wear one day.  I think the best we can hope for is some kind of costume exchange where you buy a quality costume and sell it after Halloween. >


some kind of costume exchange where you buy a quality costume and sell it after Halloween.

Austin TX had a place like this that jusssssst closed at the end of 2022, after 38 years in business. "Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds" on South Congress
They had cheap shit if you wanted cheap, but they also had decent outfits that you could buy, or "rent" for a weekend for like a third of the purchase price. e.g. a dinner-theater-quality costume would sell for $100 or rent for $35
I went by there last fall after they announced they were closing soon & made all sales final. Asked the store manager why they were closing; he said "it's just time". 
More like, time to cash out & retire in style. I've read online that LSD's owner bought her building in 2002 and the land it's sitting on is appraised at $1.2MM; there's bound to be a new condo tower or lux hotel that would probably pay $5MM or more for that location. >

seems like they could have still sold the business tho…just w/o the building.  inventory and contacts/pricing would be worth a dime, not to mention name recognition.