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Home Channel News, Feb 7, 2000 by Brae Canlen

For trim-a-tree buyers, Christmas 2000

NATIONAL REPORT -- Ordering holiday merchandise is part science, part clairvoyance, and to some degree, a matter of taste. Maybe that's why trim-a-tree merchandisers do their Christmas shopping all year long.

Take Bruce Ramp, the seasonal buyer for McGuckin Hardware in Boulder, Colo. After 28 years on the job, Ramp is still passionate about his category and finds nothing strange about the practice of ordering holiday decorations three weeks after Christmas.

"You're most accurate when you've just finished the season," Ramp explained in an interview with NHCN on Jan. 14. Ramp had just returned from the International Gift and Home Furnishings Market in Atlanta, one of the bigger shows for trim-a-tree buyers. Ignoring the 50-plus messages waiting in his voice mail, Ramp talked for almost an hour about McGuckin's personal blend of 5,700 holiday skus.

One new product that caught Ramp's attention is a light projector that casts an image of Santa Claus on walls, garage doors or any flat surface. Consumers can adjust Santa's image by moving the projector closer or farther. Automobile Christmas lights that plug into a vehicle's cigarette lighter are nothing new, but next season's products will include miniature trees and candelabras for the dashboard.

McGuckin Hardware still sells replacement color wheels for folks who won't give up their silver aluminum trees. But fiber optic trees that light from within have become the cutting edge in this category. These three-foot trees were hot sellers nationwide last Christmas, according to several seasonal buyers interviewed by NHCN. Next Christmas, consumers can look forward to an improved fiber optic Santa (his beard and lapels light up) and an angel with glowing wings.

Ramp takes holiday color schemes very seriously, and this past season McGuckin offered a light strand with clear white, frosted white and teal bulbs. "It looked just like ice," said Ramp, who had the product made to his specifications. McGuckin sold a lot of purple and gold lights last year to homeowners who demanded a different look. Next season's palette will offer numerous options, thanks to a new product called EZ Color. "They look, like condoms for light bulbs," Ramp explained. "You just slip them over a clear midget light to get the color pattern you want."

Overstocks disdained

McGuckin's seasonal aisle, a 300-foot-long corridor through the center of the store, provides Ramp with enough space to test out new products. But like all seasonal buyers, Ramp is risk averse. He won't be buying the new swag lights that drape over each other in concentric circles; "they looked a little limp to me," Ramp observed. He passed on the animated Scooby Doo figure because "it's unique for three weeks and then it gets boring." He plans to order many of the standard items like icicle lights, artificial birds (more than 15 species) and light sculptures (flat and 3-D).

But caution comes at a price, which Ramp learned last year when McGuckin came up short on sleigh bells. Even the large straps of hand-cast bells that cost $250 were gone in two weeks. "They had that true Currier & Ives sound," Ramp recalled.

Trim-a-tree buyers agreed, however, that it's always better to sell out early than to get stuck with a surplus. Some retailers sell their unsold merchandise at a steep markdown while others stash it away until the next season. Pike Family Nurseries, a 25-unit garden center chain in Georgia, pooled its leftover merchandise into one location and held its first post-Christmas sale this year. Heavy advertising brought hordes of shoppers on Jan. 13 to 17, according to Mike Chapman, Pike's Christmas buyer.

Like most other retailers interviewed by NHCN, Chapman ordered too many icicle lights this year. But lighted deer lawn sculptures sold "phenomenally well," Chapman said, and the dancing Santas ended the season with a 90 percent sell-through. For next Christmas, Chapman bet his money on tree ornaments that look like antique toys, mailbox wraps (also called "huggers") and "anything in the snowman category." Pike also hopes to expand its online sales of Christmas decorations.

Sandy Gray, the trim-a-tree buyer at Do it Best, takes a conservative approach to her category. She passed on the swag lights at the Atlanta show, as well as a new fan-shaped arrangement of lights designed for tree branches. Based on last season's sales, Gray will go heavy into fiber optics this year but cut back on large Christmas wreaths. The talking M&M candy dish will be replaced with a dancing Pinocchio. Do it Best's 275 trim-a-tree skus will include the traditional Nativity scene and Mr. and Mrs. Claus, the ubiquitous North Pole couple. "I get so sick of those two I could die," Gray admitted.

Buying cautiously

Every Christmas buyer takes at least one gamble each season, ordering something based strictly on gut instinct. For Gray last season, it was the Alpine Tree, a homely artificial conifer that came in three-, four- and five-foot sizes. After the trees were shipped, Gray received three calls from Do it Best members who asked, "What am I supposed to do with this ugly tree?"