Here Chris Mee of Fancy Dress Castle on The Parade, Watford, calls for support of the high street and gives top tips on how to save money on your costume this Halloween. Love your local shops!

During a troubled 18 months of trading on the high streets of Britain, there are many small and larger stores performing well and defying the downturn.

Many of the stores surviving are offering something you just can't purchase online, like a haircut or buying a sandwich.

We've seen most of the shops at the top of the town converted into restaurants and bars over the last 20 years, however many smaller independent stores are now appearing, often offering specialist products and services.

As national stores like Maplins and Toys R Us go into administration, other stores appear.

In the latest addition to the intu centre, the new Debenhams store is merchandised to perfection inside, strange to think this was the old market and C&A.

There are several smaller stores doing well, even though it’s a difficult time trading on Watford High Street.

Once you walk up to the pond, the atmosphere changes and it feels more like being in the park.

With no noisy buses flying past and heavy building works, the top of town by the pond is a place for children and feels much calmer.

We've been trading for 18 months now, just next to the pond and started by just offering fancy dress costumes.

We still sell the costumes, and with Halloween coming up at the end of the month we are expecting to be extremely busy.

However we have also taken the business in a different direction this year, offering tailormade balloon decor and balloon bouquets.

Our team can set up the party room for your event and make sure your party kicks off well.

We offer more accessories than costumes now, as incomes have become squeezed since the Brexit vote. We have a changing room, again offering a service; you can't try on costumes online before you buy.

Fang-tastic money saving tips for Halloween

Our top tip for saving your money this Halloween is to use something you already own, and change the outfit by adding some accessories.

Accessories are much cheaper than a whole costume; for example there are so many masks this year with The Purge series becoming so popular.

With many different 3D zombie transfers, simply applied with water, you can change your look in minutes for under a tenner.

There are some great tutorials on You-Tube to help you get started with face painting and make up.

Give yourself lots of time, as the make-up itself is fairly cheap to buy, just don't be in a rush when you're applying anything to your face.

For the girls, glitter applied carefully to your face around the eyes is a great way to make yourself sparkle.

Rather than spend money on a full Halloween costume, that may already be all gory, look at purchasing a much cheaper everyday costume and use face-paint.

A good example being to recreate The Nun, a film in the cinemas currently.

Have a look in your wardrobe, for anything that may be possible to use in a costume, then get together with a few friends who have done the same.

If you all bring a few things you have used before, like you may have some black feather wings and your friend may have some skeleton gloves, then you can all share your items and create exciting new costumes together.