Will Party City’s Eid Decorations Be Enough For the Muslim Community?

American Muslims have long awaited big businesses to recognize their buying power and cater to their culturally diverse bracket.

Islam is the third largest religious group with approximately 3.5 million Muslims living in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center, yet we have remained a largely untapped market. Until now, Ramadan and Eid products have largely been offered by Muslim owned businesses, like Eid Creations.

Eid Creations, a Muslim, woman owned company was one of the first to successfully tap into the niche market. Like most startups, the journey has not always been an easy one for Eid Creations. Rewind to early 2011, when most Ramadan and Eid decorations were in the DIY phase, we saw and felt a yearning of young Muslim families to highlight Islamic holidays by recreating family traditions based around Ramadan and Eid Islamic holidays.

We tried to champion that cause by designing and creating several products and collections, approaching mainstream stores and meeting with buyers to try to convince them of their significance; but we were let down every time, as store representatives were skeptic of the market potential.

Those rejections pushed us to embark on our own journey as we were convinced of the necessity of celebrating Islamic holidays.  We tirelessly worked to create designs that would be enjoyed by Muslim families, by referring back to the Islamic Golden Age, a time when Islamic art was admired in western civilization.  With time, we realized that our Muslim community was a vibrant one, that had different tastes and interpretations as to how Ramadan and Eid decor should look like.

Everyone seemed to agree on the Crescent and Star design, but the Lanterns, drummers and arabesques were cultural preferences. Over the years, our design team came to understand what designs and themes connected with our community and consequently our collections evolved to cater to their varied sophisticated tastes and requests.

Although it may be more difficult to deny the market potential; designing for such a culturally diverse market remains a challenge. Party City, with its “One Thousand and One Nights” inspired Eid collection, has created a somewhat trite amalgamation of Islamic imagery that subsequently pigeonholes the buyer. It has even been suggested that a specific color be “assigned” to both Ramadan and Eid; how could one possibly condense such a rich history, such beautifully diverse people into a single color?

Understanding the buyer in any retail application is paramount. Is it possible for a non-Muslim company to truly understand the Muslim buyer? Things like cost vs. quality are different in each market. Has Party City’s pricing undercut existing Muslim owned party supply companies? It would be nearly impossible for a small company to compete with the “everyday low pricing” of Party City but the age old saying is still true; you get what you pay for. In any market there is a range of pricing and corresponding quality.

Will American Muslims continue to support and buy from Muslim owned companies or will the ease of buying whatever is on the shelf at a store nearby too convenient?

Party City is to be commended for being the first mainstream retailer outfit to offer Muslim holiday products… Will other mainstream retailers follow suit or will they be the last?

Only time will tell.

We would love to hear your thoughts on that matter. Your feedback will help us better understand our community’s needs and thus improve our offerings. Please fill out the short survey in the link below.

https://eidcreations.com/eid-ramadan-celebration-survey/

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this publication are the individual author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Muslim Consumer Consortium.