ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) - Christmas tree sales have held steady for the last decade.
But as members of Generation Y have grown up and begun their own holiday traditions, growers said the industry is turning to new methods to attract what could be a huge pool of customers for the future.
“That’s a big, huge demographic in our country,” said Rick Dungey, executive director of the National Christmas Tree Association.
Dungey said Generation Y, also called millennials, has shown to prefer real trees over faux trees (which farmers sometimes disparagingly refer to as “plastic-and-metal type decorations”).
“As they become adults and start their own Christmas traditions, that’s a big opportunity for our industry to have a huge increase in the number of customers each year,” he told the Altoona Mirror. “People choose an actual Christmas tree because they want to have a tradition.”
Rick Koontz, a third-generation tree grower who owns the adjoining Koontz and Sellers farms in Bedford County, said he’s turned to Facebook to increase his name recognition among younger tree buyers.
“I do have a website and a Facebook page,” he said. “Social media has really helped.”
Koontz said he deals mostly in wholesale purchases; he planned to ship trees from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg and south to the Baltimore and Washington areas starting two days before Thanksgiving.
He said he’s seen more people buying trees the last two years.
“I think it’s a sign the economy is getting better,” he said. “Things are looking up and people are willing to come out. It’s very rewarding on my part to have a family show up. I give them a saw and up in the field they go.”
Koontz said he’s also selling more big trees, which tower between 12 and 16 feet tall.
“I always get a call once a year from someone asking ’What’s the biggest tree you have?’” he said.
This year it was 19-foot Douglas fir tree, which Koontz said is already spoken for.
“It’s going to Washington, D.C.,” he said.
People are also looking for small trees, Koontz said, and have a new niche in the industry: tabletop trees.
“They’ll be 2 to 3, maybe 4-foot trees that people will put on furniture, for in those real small apartments,” he said. “There’s definitely more of a market for that” now.
Even if someone isn’t looking for a miniature tree, the most common tree size won’t be suitable in an urban environment, Dungey of the tree association said.
The most common tree size is between 6 and 8 feet tall with an 80 percent taper, meaning the bottom of the tree is about 80 percent as wide as the tree is tall.
A 10-foot tree with that taper, for instance, will be 8 feet wide at the bottom.
Young people living in an apartment building can’t haul a large, 40-pound tree up a stairwell or down an apartment hallway, he said, so growers are using different techniques to make trees that are maybe a bit slimmer and lighter.
But as demand grows overall, farmers have to balance current sales needs while experimenting with new trees, as crops need between six and eight years to grow before they can be sold.
“There’s more to it than putting a bunch of seedlings in the ground and they magically turn into money,” Dungey said.
Regardless of trends, Christmas tree farming remains a big business in Pennsylvania, with the commonwealth ranking second in the country for Christmas tree farms and fourth in the number of trees cut each year.
And grower Chris Kiratzis of Tuckaway Tree Farm in McAlevy’s Fort said this year will be no exception. It’s going to be a busy season.
Kiratzis, whose business is 90 percent wholesale, started a week ago and planned to load two truck shipments daily - each carrying between 450 and 700 trees - for 10 straight days as they head to Indianapolis, New Jersey and the Daytona, Florida, suburbs.
Kiratzis said 2014 produced a good growing season for trees with plenty of cool, moist days in the spring and summer.
“Our trees are the best they’ve ever looked,” he said.
It’s good news for people in other states who are going to purchase a Pennsylvania tree, maybe even from one of Kiratzis’ shipments.
“The cold weather acts like a refrigerator keeping the cut trees fresh for shipment,” he said.
Koontz said he and his mother, Saundra, whose father started the family’s tree farm in 1951, have been out in the fields looking at this year’s crop and are looking forward to seeing his customers.
Some people wait until the last minute to buy a tree, he said, but he doesn’t expect that this year.
“This cold snap, I’m hoping, will get people in the Christmas spirit. A little snow and the cold weather normally does,” he said.
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Information from: Altoona Mirror, https://www.altoonamirror.com
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