MILWAUKEE — Consumers who were spooked by the recession last year are suiting up for Halloween in greater numbers this year. And many are heading online for their costumes.

Major retail chains such as Kohl’s department stores, Target and Kmart have beefed up their costume offerings by using the Internet to sell large assortments of Halloween costumes that aren’t stocked in their stores. Much of that merchandise will be shipped from Buyseasons Inc., according to Jalem Getz, chief executive officer of the New Berlin, Wis.,-based division of Liberty Media Corp.

“If anyone is serious about the Halloween business this year, they’re working with us,” Getz said. “They use our expertise, our assortment, to cash in on Halloween.”

Buyseasons’ two Halloween websites — buycostumes.com, which focuses mainly on costumes for teens and young adults, and costumeexpress.com, which offers children’s costumes — account for as much as 50 percent of U.S. costume sales online, Getz said.

In addition to selling costumes directly to consumers, the company has become the largest online wholesaler of costumes, Getz said.

The program works like this: Retailers who operate websites contract with Buyseasons for Halloween costumes. Buyseasons owns the inventory and keeps it in the New Berlin warehouse. When a retailer makes a sale on its website, the item is sold by Buyseasons at wholesale to that retailer. The retailer takes a markup and sells it to the customer in a process that is invisible to the consumer. The item ships to the customer directly from the Buyseasons warehouse.

“That’s brilliant,” said Bill Emerson, head of Emerson Advisors, a Florida retail consulting firm. The retailers who use the Buyseasons program for their online Halloween shops don’t put any working capital into it and don’t use any floor space for what is a five-week business, he noted.

“That’s just found money,” Emerson said.

“This is the second year for a Halloween shop on Kohls.com,” said Julie Gardner, chief marketing officer for Kohl’s. “This year, we have made the site even easier to shop, adding more options to search by category, theme, age group and gender.”

Buyseasons supplies Kohl’s Halloween website.

Internet Retailer, a trade magazine, reported this month that more than a third of all Halloween shoppers, 35 percent, plan to buy online, based on a survey conducted by Lightspeed Online Research Inc. exclusively for Internet Retailer.

The National Retail Federation expects Halloween spending at all types of retailers to increase this year, back to 2008 levels, after a dismal season last year. According to a survey by BIGresearch for the NRF, Americans will spend an average $66 on Halloween items this year, up from $56 in 2009.

Total spending for the holiday, including costumes, decorations, candy, and greeting cards, is expected to hit $5.8 billion.

The NRF survey had particularly good news for costume retailers, showing the highest percentage of people since 2005 planning to wear costumes this year: 40 percent.

Those findings coincide with the experience at Buyseasons, where staffing is up 10 percent this year to keep up with demand, Getz said. The company has about 2,200 people working this month at the New Berlin headquarters, call center, warehouse and distribution center. That includes about 500 year-round employees and 1,700 staffers hired for the fall rush.

Liberty Media, a publicly traded Colorado company, doesn’t disclose sales for the Buyseasons division. Liberty is ranked as the 11th-largest online retailer in the U.S. by Internet Retailer. Liberty’s e-commerce businesses, which includes Expedia Inc., RedEnvelope.com and ProFlowers.com, had revenue of $931 million in 2009, up 20 percent, according to the company’s annual report.

By the numbers

35%

Percent of Halloween shoppers who plan to buy online

$66

Average amount Americans will spend on Halloween items this year, up from $56 in 2009

Sources: Internet Retailer magazine, National Retail Federation