Christmas Tree Vendors Trim Up for Competition

With prices of prized noble firs up 10% to 15% this year, entrepreneurs who run small Christmas tree lots are facing even tougher competition from chain discount stores.

At Home Depot, a 6-foot noble fir costs $32.90. At most independent lots, the same tree runs about $45. And the disparity grows as the trees get taller.

Lot owners say the only way they can compete is to create a memorable experience. Buying a tree from a warehouse, after all, is sort of like roasting chestnuts in a microwave oven; it lacks the Yuletide spirit and sentimentality.

At his lot in Sherman Oaks, Ray Swiertz has Christmas music, bright-red wheelbarrows brimming with firewood and life-size models of Santa and Mrs. Claus.

“You put on a little show for people, and then they don’t mind paying a little more for the trees,” said Swiertz, who sets up shop at Hazeltine Avenue and Moorpark Street.

At Rob & Cathy’s Christmas Trees at De Soto Avenue and Nordhoff Street in Chatsworth, owners Rob McBroom and Cathy Barker do business on the same lot where they produce the annual FrightFair Halloween attraction earlier in the year. The lot’s structures are the same sets used in FrightFair, repainted from Halloween black to a snowy Christmas blue and white.

The lot has a living Santa Claus for photos and lap-sitting. Recorded Christmas carols enhance the holiday feel. McBroom’s trees are displayed standing in water, which he says preserves them better than if they are nailed to stands.

“We’re competing with companies that are selling Christmas trees as a loss leader,” McBroom said. “They’re not in the Christmas tree business. They’re selling Christmas trees as a way of getting people to buy lightbulbs and lumber. We’re going after a different customer.”

That customer, whether buying from a hardware chain or a community lot, probably will pay more a tree this year than last year because of a shortage of noble firs.

About a decade ago, growers in Oregon and Washington started planting fewer noble firs because of a glut. Then poor crops cut the noble population still further. Because it takes eight to 15 years for a noble to reach salable size, the market started feeling the shortage last year.

The noble fir, competing with Douglas fir, balsam fir, Scotch pine, Fraser fir and Virginia pine and other varieties, has emerged as the most popular tree on the market in Southern California, sellers say.

In 1999, lots raised prices on nobles 10% to 15%, and there has been another hike this year. But not all lots have raised prices. Val Price, owner of the Oregon Family lot, said she’s holding the line.

“We’re absorbing most of the cost ourselves,” Price said. “We’re not a high-end lot. We just put all our costs together and hope to make a little at the end.”

The higher price of gasoline has raised the cost of trucking the trees from Oregon to Southern California from $300 to $500 per shipment, said Price,who grows some of her own inventory at an Oregon farm owned by her family.

The cost of renting a vacant lot to sell the trees isn’t getting any lower, either. McBroom said he has spent as much as $18,000 in December to rent a lot.