THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Tree History -- In Conclusion

Different organizations have attempted to lay claim to starting or reviving the association of the evergreen tree and its ornaments with Christmas.  Self-seeking motivations aside, putting up and decorating a Christmas tree is and has been a well-established tradition in the typical American household for over 115 years.  The demand spawned an industry: growing Christmas trees.  In our website, we'll discuss the various kinds of trees that have become popular to use as Christmas trees, how they're grown and in which regions, and where you can buy one.  Lastly, having explored the "high style" origins of the introduction of the tree to the US, we'll continue to add articles on theme trees, Christmas tree ornaments, and other Christmas tree decorations.

CHRISTMAS TREE DECORATIONS

The earliest Christmas trees were decorated with candles.  Germanic peoples added fruits and materials from nature including pine cones gently woven through and amongst the branches.  By the late 1800s, German glass ornaments were being produced, designs which were commonly farm animals, stars and other natural objects.  The best information that we can find indicates that early glass ornaments were substitutes for the original items decorating the early trees: real fruit became a glass lemon, a glass apple, etc.  Early inventive glass blowers introduced "icycles" to mimic, once again, that which was found in nature.  In short, the early glass ornaments and tree decorations copied nature in the interest of decorating a tree that would stay decorated for weeks and not begin to smell of rotting fruit.

Of interesting note in the mid-1860s, a German immigrant preacher put up a Christmas tree outside his church only to be asked by his American followers to take it down as "imagery common to paganism".  By the time Woolworth introduced his ornaments in the 1890s, Americans were eager to follow suit after the European custom.

Woolworth did not design ornaments; he merely bought those he found in Germany.  At that time, ornament designs included the original fruits and nuts, but "hollow" glass ornaments were also being produced.  Line with quicksilver, the ornaments imported by Woolworth included pine cones, animals, fruits, birds, flowers, and Santa Claus.  They were a huge success.  For a nickel up through a dime, customers could purchase "re-useable" ornaments, indicating they were investing in their family's future Christmas trees.  With Woolworth was born the idea of the "collectible investment", associating it with family history, memorabilia of value to be passed down for generations.  The concept was entirely new to America.  Europeans simply walked out their front door and could look at fountains and buildings 400, 800 and in some cases 1000 years old.  In the United States, the oldest buildings at the time might be 80 years old.  Americans felt a distinct lack of history--they were busy creating a future for themselves and their subsequent generations.  Woolworth promised "history" plus "future" in his advertising.  Buying a Woolworth ornament was an investment in your family's future, a trinket that transferred family history.  The advertising message "hit home" and has been with us ever since.  It is, in fact, the entire basis of the "collectible" market.

Over the years, Christmas tree decorations have waxed and waned through various trends.  A trend, as far as marketing is concerned, is merely a new twist on the same product.  When something is new, sales are high.  Sales drop off after a certain amount of time, and to re-establish earlier sales levels, marketers have to "come out with something new".  In a well saturated consumer market, a completely new product is quite rare.  More often, because of the large investment required on the part of the manufacturer, the same equipment used to produce an "old item" must be used to produce a "new item".  Detroit, USA is famous for changing the shape of a fender and calling it a new car when a particular model's sales are dwindling.  Same car--just a different fender and a new name.  Thus, looking back to the years just after WWII, we see a re-emergence of the ornaments plentiful prior to the war, but their "newness" began to die off just 3-4 years later.  In 1960, we see "new" ornaments being introduced.  Many were aluminum, so-called "mod" for modern designs.  Frankly, they were cheaper to produce and marketed as the "latest things".  Tinsel became immensely popular as it was reintroduced as strips of cheap silver-colored plastic.  After the public grew weary of plastic strips on their trees, many small dolls were introduced.  Lots of fabric and similarly stuffed ornaments were sold.  German imports had dropped dramatically.  It was in the 80s, that Russell Rhodes, Radko and others re-introduced the German-style ornaments, but they made them much, much fancier, quite higher priced, and marketed them as "old world" and "luxurious".  Hence, once again, history and luxury were being marketed to a new generation, eager to purchase something with history in order to create history for a future generation.  A company literally calling itself "Old World Christmas" was founded in 1979 and has been selling blown glass Christmas ornaments ever since.  OWC has found its niche in selling blown glass ornaments almost never more than 4" tall, and almost always costing around $12.00.  Their sculpting is excellent and the ornaments stay fresh with 30 or more designs retired and 30 or more designs introduced each year.  The higher end of the glass ornaments market was pursued by Radko, Fraga and others.  These ornaments have typically been deeper, wider sculptures averaging 6-10" in height.  One can guess the retail price of a Radko ornament by using this formula: $10 per inch.  Thus, an OWC ornament that costs around $12 will cost around $40 for Radko.  Russell Rhodes wants to be middle ground; more luxurious, niche designs, and larger than OWC, but not as large or as costly as the high end: most of his ornaments cost between $20-$30.  There are all sorts of manufacturers who have gone out of business since 2002 in the United States.  9/11 had a dramatic impact on retail consumer goods that is generally attributed to be 10-15% shrinkage per year.  By the recession of 2008, fully 40% of neighborhood gift stores had gone our of business or moved to the internet.  So, we ask: what impact does all this have on Christmas tree decorations?--for it is the continuing interest in ornaments that drives tree sales!  Nobody puts up a tree and hangs nothing on it.

CHRISTMAS TREE DECORATIONS -- 2008 AND BEYOND

On the plus side, the internet allows a seller to reach millions of people per day.  On the down side for the consumer, most of whom use search engines to find what they're looking for, there is limited real estate.  In other words, when gifts stores were the primary outlet for artistic goods, there could be 2 per town, 10 per city, 20 per metropolis, 2000-14000 per state--depending upon size--and well over 200,000 across the US.  Each one of these stores had access to a few thousand people.  On a search engine, consumers are interested in page 1 usually, and then maybe only the first 3 or 4 listings.  So, when it comes down to it, instead of 200,000 stores offering sales channels to manufacturers, perhaps only 3 or 4 are "great sellers" of these goods, with another 40 or 50 selling moderate volumes.  The impact by 2011 will simply be more manufacturers out of business as they cannot find enough sales channels to broadly sell their manufactured goods.

One caveat: people love Christmas and love decorating for Christmas.  History shows us that where there is demand, the supply will follow.  Hence, we're expecting a whole new introduction of Christmas tree ornaments and decorations on the web by 2014.  These sellers are likely to be importers and not traditional retailers.  In other words, the supply line has traditionally been:

overseas manufacturer--->importer--->wholesaler--->retailer. 

By around 1970, more and more wholesalers were going to China/Taiwan and importing themselves "directly".  The importers found themselves out of business.  The supply chain became:

overseas manufacturer--->importer/wholesaler--->retailer. 

With the disappearance of the neighborhood gift shop beginning with 9/11, through the recession of 2008-2011, we believe the supply chain will soon become:

overseas manufacturer--->importer/web retailer.  (wholesaler has been omitted because this would put the importer in the position of competing with their own retail customers)

For the consumer, this can mean really, really inexpensive pricing for the same products they've been purchasing for years.  However, it also means less variety.  Overseas manufacturers require very large minimum quantities, and few importers can sell quantities in that volume through a single online retail outlet across a large variety of items.  Hence, we'll see high quality, lower prices and fewer choices in the decorative portion of the market for the middle and upper wage earning families.  At the mega stores, we'll continue to see even higher quality, low prices, and less choice.  Target and others have attempted to bring "designer" fashion--including ornaments--into the "big box", large-scale store environment with mixed results.  Simplicity in design usually translates into lower manufacturing costs.  Simple ornaments will be great bargains at these large stores.  However, you won't find a large number of old world ornaments.  They're simply too costly and time consuming to make.  So, who will be the designers of ornaments tomorrow?  We don't know.  The horizon looks challenging mostly through the crunch of the limited on-line real estate.  We expect that the internet will respond with more online real estate because the need and demand will be there.