Icicle Lights Are Red-Hot This Holiday Season

There’s nothing chilly about the effect that icicle-style Christmas lights have had on the holiday decorating market this year.

A dangling variation on the standard colored mini-lights, the strands of tiny white bulbs strung together vertically to resemble icicles have dominated the yuletide lighting selection at retail stores. They are turning up on eaves, overhangs, windows, even massive construction cranes and almost any other place with a straight drop.

“People just can’t seem to get enough of them,” said Dori Kinderman, director of marketing for Philadelphia-based Brite Star Manufacturing Co., an icicle light distributor.

The icicle light craze has meant brisk business for the entire “trim-and-tree” industry, which has flooded the market with a record number of units after two years in which supply shortages left both consumers and retailers fuming under their Santa hats.

The industry has shipped more than 150 million packages of icicle lights to stores this year, almost a 300% increase over last year, said Marvin Press, executive vice president of Yonkers, N.Y.-based Minami International Corp., one of the nation’s largest suppliers of Christmas lights.

Patrick McElhaney, product manager for General Electric Co.’s seasonal lighting division in Cleveland, estimates that icicle lights will capture 30% of sales this year in the holiday lighting product market, which includes everything from electric candles to plug-in Santas.

Minami International, an 80-year-old manufacturing company, decided to focus exclusively on holiday lights and Christmas tree stands in the mid-1950s. “We make what the customers want and, right now, customers want icicle lights,” Press said. “They are by far the hottest item out there this year.”

Local retailers are finding that to be true. Orchard Supply Hardware in Hollywood, for example, has devoted nearly three-quarters of its Christmas light display to the icicle variety. Store manager Dave Turner thinks his entire inventory--and that at the company’s more than 20 other regional outlets--could be sold out by the Sunday before Christmas.

“They’re the thing this year,” Turner said. “They’re selling pretty well. Everybody’s got them on their house.”

Industry lore credits the icicle lights to a product designer in Hong Kong who was inspired by city dwellers who hung strands of traditional white mini-lights off their balconies.

Some icicle lights hit the market in 1996, Press said, but the product didn’t really explode in the popular consciousness until the following year, when about 10 million packages were shipped to retailers and sold out soon after Thanksgiving.

In 1998, retailers quadrupled their orders, but it still wasn’t enough. “Last year, you couldn’t find an icicle light after Dec. 1,” Press said.

This year, said Brite Star’s Kinderman, “Everybody in their right mind was importing tons and tons of icicle lights in anticipation. They wanted to make sure there would be enough to meet the demand.”

For many Americans, Christmas decorating has become the ultimate vehicle for self-expression, and Press said he believes the initial demand for icicle lights reflects that. “It’s a totally different look,” he said. “People are always looking for new ways to be different.”

For Los Feliz resident Gary Phegley, it was the aesthetics of icicle lights that sold him.

The interior designer had gone to a hardware store recently looking for traditional white mini-lights to combine with spruce boughs to wrap a client’s balcony. In the end, he opted for icicle lights.

“I just wanted something I could hang on a balcony,” Phegley said. “I think they’re a creative option.”