Interview: Owner Randy Mikels (Horror-Shop.com)

Q&A with Horror-Shop.com’s owner Randy Mikels

Horror-Shop.com’s CEO Randy Mikels first got in to the horror business with the opening of Munich’s first haunted house, ‘Shockers’, which operated from 1998 to 2003. In this time, Randy, 49, opened the ‘Horror-Shop’ as a retail store and today Horror-Shop has two separate retail locations in Bavaria‘s capital Munich as well as the online store Horror-Shop.com and is one of the biggest retailers for Halloween and Horror Merchandise in Europe.

What was your inspiration behind selling Halloween and Horror products?

Before I started selling Halloween costumes and props I had opened Germany’s first body piercing store in 1986 called ‘Cutglass Piercing’. My piercing studio had always been decorated in a mystical mood with a lot of horror elements, memorabilia and horror classics. After a while more and more customers wanted to buy our decoration and we started selling more and more Halloween and horror articles. The space for a piercing studio and a horror retail store did not last long, so we decided to open the Horror-Shop as well as Horror-Shop.com, our online store.

Where did your love of horror come from?

I grew up in the US Army Base in Bad Tölz where Halloween has always been celebrated and as a kid, I would often be found reading ghost stories rather the typical teen magazines of the time, which my parents would have preferred.

Is there anything you are afraid of?

Not really, no. Sometimes I think the people in the morning on my way to work are much scarier than all our props here!

What are your favourite Horror Movies?

– Hellraiser

– Inside

– Texas Chainsaw Massacre (but I prefer the remake!)

– Sieben

– Martyrs

What has been the strangest order you have received?

We make a lot of props for TV and theatres and I we have had to source some corpses from time to time. This can range from a burned body to a body that has been rotting in the water for a long time so I have to do some research beforehand, as they need to look very different.

What makes Horror-Shop different form other horror and Halloween retailers?

We don’t want to sell our scary and fun Halloween and horror products without any emotion, like the big department stores do. We really want to give our customers the experience as if they are walking through an actual haunted house or a decorated theme park. Like the theme parks, we build our own sceneries in which we can present our products. When you walk around our stores, you already feel like you are attending a Halloween Party or a scary haunted house. So instead of just shopping for Halloween products, you can already see how you would use the decoration and get inspiration for your own Halloween Party. We try to deliver this same shopping experience in our online store with our horror-inspired design.

If you would like to read more about Horror-Shop or browse their many items, then make sure that you head on over to Horror-Shop.com.