Gold in the Glitter Game

By LESLIE EARNEST

Nov. 25, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Jeff Lopez got into the Christmas decorating business because he wanted to work only three months a year and kick back the rest of the time.

Fat chance.

Lopez has done such a good job of snagging big contracts with cities and shopping malls that his company, Santa Ana-based Dekra-Lite Industries Inc., is busy all year. It has some of the largest high-profile decorating assignments in Orange and Los Angeles counties--including South Coast Plaza, Fashion Island and the city of Beverly Hills.

Every year, the business that Lopez has headed since 1987 starts out by undoing what it did the year before--removing enough holiday lights to stretch from Santa Ana to San Diego. Then, employees begin lining up more work, designing and selling decoration packages that will be set up later in the year.

By November, Dekra-Lite’s 120 workers are like elves on a mission. They move into malls at night, stringing lights and erecting Christmas trees. They tackle downtown areas while cities sleep, stretching snowflake displays over roadways.

Dekra-Lite and other companies that offer this sort of holiday wizardry are much in demand as shopping centers and city business districts clamor for splashy displays to lure potential shoppers. The demand has spawned an industry that generates $40 million to $80 million a year, depending on which industry insider is doing the guessing.

“For us, it’s a very important part of our holiday shopping program,” said Mary Cynar, Beverly Hills’ business district manager. “We’ve actually gotten calls from people coming to Beverly Hills and wanting to know when the holiday decorations are going up.”

The decorating business experienced solid growth during the shopping center boom from the 1960s through the 1980s. Cities jumped on the bandwagon, turning to professional decorators to put up more elaborate holiday displays.

The goal is not simply to decorate--it’s to enchant, said Gordon Becker, owner of the industry’s largest company, Becker Group in Baltimore.

“We are in the business of making magic,” said Becker, whose company’s accounts include the Irvine Spectrum Center. “When we do that, and people have that connection to childhood or family--the holiday spirit--we’ve succeeded at doing our job.”

With annual sales now hitting $4 million, Dekra-Lite has become the largest holiday decorating company “west of the Rockies,” Lopez said. It has holiday contracts with 40 cities and 400 strip malls and shopping centers, which means Christmas preparations take up most of the year.

Lopez, 41, attributes his success to a professional approach that separated his firm from what he calls “fly-by-night” competitors who took on decorating jobs when their regular jobs in construction and other seasonal businesses slowed for the winter.

While other decorators used one-page fliers to advertise their work, Dekra-Lite handed its customers a 60-page brochure. The firm “polished” its sales employees, Lopez said, sending them to manufacturing plants in Indiana and Mexico so they could understand the mechanics of decorating with huge displays.

The effort began to pay off in 1988, about a year after Lopez got into the business. Dekra-Lite landed its first mall assignment--putting up Christmas lights and a Santa cottage for MainPlace/Santa Ana.

“Decorating . . . on this scale is really quite an art,” said Judy Bijlani, the mall’s marketing director. “I just felt confident he could do the job. And he’s been with us ever since.”

But the job doesn’t always end after decorations are put up. Dekra-Lite also has to make sure they stay up. Last year, for example, El Nino-driven winds and heavy rains took a $30,000 bite out of Dekra-Lite’s profits as the company had to send out workers to repair malfunctioning lights and other damages.

One year, Lopez recalled, brisk winds hurled a 15-foot Frosty the Snowman into the bay at Huntington Beach.

Ironically, Lopez got into the business because he wanted to work less, not more. While finishing a college degree in business administration, he heard about a residential decorating franchise where, supposedly, a person could make plenty of money by working just three months a year.

Great deal, Lopez thought. How hard can it be to put Christmas lights on houses?

He bought a franchise in Dekra-Lite, but quickly found that it was more lucrative to decorate businesses than homes.

“Like anything, you want to go to the heavy users,” the Seal Beach resident said. He began collecting commercial accounts, and eventually bought the company name.

His mother helped finance the venture, taking out a second mortgage on her home to provide $40,000, he said. Later, his sister kicked in $30,000 in seed money.

His first commercial account was a Conroy’s Flowers shop, followed quickly by a couple of Weinerschnitzels fast food outlets and some other restaurants. Then he got the nod from MainPlace.

Two years later, he won the account that put the company into the black: South Coast Plaza. The most recent decoration package, which was purchased three years ago, cost $1 million, Lopez said. The Costa Mesa center pays $100,000 annually to have the package upgraded and installed.

Dekra-Lite continues to reel in big clients. Beverly Hills paid $250,000 for its Christmas package, including six glittery star displays that sweep over Rodeo Drive and Wilshire Boulevard, Lopez said.

For the Westwood Village Community Alliance, Dekra-Lite created six overhead snowflake displays that glitter in the daytime and are illuminated at night. The project cost $90,000.

“We’re extraordinarily pleased,” said Patty Evans, operations manager for Westwood’s business improvement district.

Still, Dekra-Lite’s sales are a fraction of what industry leader Becker Group generates. The Baltimore-based firm, which decorates malls worldwide, claims annual sales of more than $20 million.

The industry has changed rather dramatically since pioneer Gordon Becker launched his company in the 1950s. At that time, clients were satisfied with a flat plywood Santa, and maybe some reindeer. For a high-tech touch, decorators would add a blinking nose for Rudolph, he recalled.

“It was absolutely as elementary as you can imagine,” he said.

Today, Becker’s grandiose displays include roof-high wreaths, castles for Santa and thousands of twinkling lights.

The industry has had to cope with other changes as well.

Mall owners are now paying more attention to the bottom line, insisting that displays be built to last longer, Becker said.

“I have some clients that use decorations until they turn to dust,” he said.

With malls and shopping centers no longer proliferating in the United States, Becker said the industry is looking to other avenues for growth, such as decorating hotels, casinos and even hospitals.

“Any public place is a potential market” he said.

When tackling a new project, companies often conduct demographic and “psychographic” studies of an area to avoid costly blunders, said Robin Miller, owner of the decorating consulting firm Miller & more in Atlanta.

“It is not unusual to do a market survey with the actual shopper to get their position prior to making the [decorating] decision,” she said. “The companies that are prone to use my services are looking to maximize their investment and make an impact on the community.”

Modern methods aside, the old standbys still rate with some residents.

In Beverly Hills, for example, locals howled when the city decided to mothball two overhead Santa and reindeer displays that had been a fixture on Wilshire Boulevard for so long that nobody can remember where they came from.

“We got a lot of complaints and, I’ll tell you, it did go up,” said Cynar, the business district manager.

“It’s a little rickety. Every year we kind of glue it together. But they like it.”

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Light Show

Decorating malls and cities for the holidays isn’t a seasonal business anymore. Dekra-Lite Industries Inc., whose sales more than doubled in three years, works throughout the year preparing for the high season.

Dekra-Lite at a Glance

Location: Santa Ana

President: Jeff Lopez

Service: Holiday decorations

Main clients: South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa; Fashion Island, Newport Beach; City of Beverly Hills

Employees: 120 peak season; 33 year-round

Sales (in millions)

1994: $1.5

1995: $2.3

1996: $2.6

1997: $3.2

1998: $4.0*