Dallas & Co.

Weird or whimsical, costume and magic store has it all

By Sarah Lohman
CIB Staff Writer

Need a niche product?

Dallas & Co. is your place.

Dallas & Co. Costumes and Magic opened under the name Novelty Village in a 6- by 8-foot space in 1974. Today, the business is finding and filling niches. The store stocks hard-to-find and unusual items, and carries almost any costume or prop you can imagine.

"We look for niches like that," said Andy Dallas, the store's owner.

The store started small, but has expanded several times and now fills its University Avenue location to the brim.

Creating the store's inventory has been an ongoing process. An upholstery shop across the street from a previous location sold pinatas, and Dallas said he didn't want his store to compete, but when the upholstery shop closed, the owner offered the unsold pinatas to Dallas. Dallas' store started selling more pinatas, and then prizes other than candy to go inside. Today, hundreds of bright pinatas dangle from the store's ceiling. The store then began to carry rental carnival games and sell prizes. They added theatrical makeup supplies, including wigs and facial hair made of real hair and latex prostheses. The company's product offerings have continued to snowball.

The niche store sells everything from fake fingers to President Obama masks.

"You need a gavel? We have a plastic gavel," Dallas said. "You need a monocle? We've got a monocle."

They keep a variety of items in stock, so someone who wants an eye patch has five to choose from. The store also sells and rents costumes. They have 2,000 rentable costumes in stock, from Elvis to a cowboy.

"We are so deep in product, we really give you anything you need," Dallas said.

The store is 12,000 square feet and has a 5,000-square-foot warehouse. The price of merchandise ranges from 5 cents to thousands of dollars. They have eight or nine employees year-round and use a lot of seasonal help.

The seasonal section is currently filling up with funny costumes and spooky decorations. They keep small sections of other holiday merchandise in the store, so you can find a Fourth of July flag in December or an Easter bunny decoration in September if needed.

The store also has a magic section, and Dallas is a performing magician who travels all over doing shows. Brick-and-mortar magic stores are rare, and Dallas & Co. fills that niche as well.

The store also carries 25 or 30 custom blue and orange products, such as feather boas and beads. The store has a wide selection of environment paper -- large sheets of paper that can be used to create backgrounds. They keep many colors and sizes in stock, but it can also be ordered.

"In our business, what happens is people come in, they specifically want something now. They normally don't come in a month in advance so we can order stuff for them," Dallas said. "We gotta have it now."

They will order anything for a customer if a supplier they use carries it.

But for Dallas, it isn't all about moving stock.

"When you come in here, I want it to be an experience. I don't care if you buy anything, I want you to come in here and look it over if that's all you want to do. The important thing is that you do come in and see how wonderful this place is," Dallas said.

There is a haunted room inside Dallas & Co. with 35,000 spooky props, some of which scream, shake and jump out at passers-by. The room is open on Saturdays before Halloween for customers to enjoy for free.

The store has a magic event the last weekend in September where the magic community comes together to give shows all weekend. Every April, the store has a sale on extra inventory and discontinued items.

Word of mouth provides most of their business, and Dallas said students who come to the university will enjoy the shop and then, years later when the company they work for needs something unusual, remember that Dallas has pretty much everything you can imagine.

"I got a phone call years ago, a woman called up and says, 'Do you have green noses?' and I asked the right question. I said 'How many do you need?' She said '2,000.' " Dallas said. "For the next few years, we had an order for thousands of green noses for whatever this company uses them for. I have no idea. That's the kind of thing we do. Who would have dreamed that someone would walk in and need thousands of green noses?"

Dallas & Co.

101 E. University Ave., Champaign

10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday

10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday

Not open Sundays

The store has special extended hours for Halloween, which can be found at www.dallasandco.com.

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