Christmas Tree Lots Top the Discounters With Decor

With prices of prized noble firs rising 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 in the San Fernando Valley area, the same tree runs about $45. And the disparity gets even wider 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 romance.

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

“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 the corner of Hazeltine Avenue and Moorpark Street.

When it comes to putting on a show, few Valley tree sellers go to greater lengths than Rob & Cathy’s Christmas Trees at the corner of De Soto Avenue and Nordhoff Street in Chatsworth.

Owners Rob McBroom and Cathy Barker, who are engaged to be married, are the producers of the annual FrightFair Halloween attraction at the same vacant lot, and they bring the same production values to their tree lot as they do to their haunted house. The lot’s structures are the same sets used in FrightFair, repainted from Halloween black to a snowy Christmas blue and white.

Not only does the lot have a real-live Santa Claus for photos and lap-sitting, it boasts a petting zoo. Christmas carols are piped through the lot to enhance the holiday feel.

Lot owners like McBroom also tend to display their trees in water rather than simply nailing them to a wood or metal stand like the big chains do, a practice that causes them to wither more quickly.

“We’re competing with companies [like Home Depot] 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 warehouse hardware chain or a community lot, is likely to pay more for his or her tree this year than last. The culprit is a shortage of noble firs.

About a decade ago, growers in Oregon and Washington started planting fewer noble firs because they were facing a glut. A year or two later, poor crops cut the noble population still further.

Because it takes eight to 15 years for a noble to reach maturity, the market started feeling the shortage last year, and it is even more acute this year.

The noble fir is only one of many varieties of Christmas tree; others include the Douglas fir, balsam fir, Scotch pine, Fraser fir and Virginia pine. But the noble has emerged as the most popular tree on the market in Southern California, sellers say.

In 1999, retailers throughout the state raised their prices on nobles about 10% to 15% per tree, and a similar increase is taking place this year, according to local lot operators.

“I started to notice the higher prices last year. I ended up getting one at Home Depot for like 20 bucks,” said Monica Bautista, who this year was shopping at the Oregon Family Christmas Trees lot at the corner of Winnetka Avenue and Victory Boulevard.

Why was she shopping at a lot this year? She said the lines are too long at Home Depot.

While most lot owners admit to raising their prices for noble firs again this year, not all of them are doing so.

Val Price, owner of the Oregon Family lot, says 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.”

Higher wholesale prices aren’t the only thing putting the squeeze on sellers and consumers. The higher price of gasoline has raised the cost of trucking the trees to Southern California from Oregon from $300 to $500 per shipment, according to 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 says he has spent as much as $18,000 a month to rent a lot, though he wouldn’t disclose how much he’s paying this year.

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A wide variety of companies and individuals sell trees in the Valley each December. Some are in the seasonal retail business full time, even though their selling season is quite short.

When McBroom and Barker aren’t selling haunted house tickets or Christmas trees, they’re building props and effects for the Halloween industry and selling them at trade fairs around the country that start up in February.

Swiertz has a different slant on the seasonal retail business. He grows pumpkins on his farm in Somis and trucks them to the Sherman Oaks lot at Halloween time. In December, he orders trees from Oregon and sells them at the same lot. During the rest of the year, he sells his produce at the Queen Ranch fruit stand in Somis.

Some sellers engage in very different sorts of businesses the rest of the year. Oliver Holt Sons & Daughters, one of the largest lot owners in the area with five lots throughout the Valley selling about 16,000 trees a year, is in the custom landscaping line when it isn’t selling trees. But the Christmas business starts earlier than one might think; stores, banks and other operations that display tall trees order them from Holt as early as June, according to supervisor J.R. Wallworth.

Then there are churches and other nonprofits that sell trees to raise funds.

While most retailers face an anxious holiday season because of worries about a weakening economy, the Valley’s Christmas tree lot owners expect to do about as well as last year in terms of sales, or a little better.

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“We had a pumpkin patch here, and people paid very good money for pumpkins. That’s an indicator to me that they’re going to want to pay good money for nice trees, also,” Swiertz said.

Swiertz says he ordered about 5% more trees than last year. Wallworth ordered about the same number, but thinks he’ll sell a few more.

“We’re expecting to do a little better this year,” he said.

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OFF THE BEATEN HOLIDAY PATH

Universal CityWalk offers over-the-top entertainment while some businesses convert their stock to suit the season. Valley Business, B4