the business of Christmas
Issue 63 - December 17th, 2021
The Christmas week is upon us, and if you are like me you sit around wondering how big the market is for Christmas trees and also how much money those companies make that get paid to install Christmas lights.
Christmas trees are big business all over the world, but in the United States we particularly love our Christmas trees - real and fake.
In America, Christmas trees are a multibillion-dollar business.
At an average retail price of $75 a pop, these trees make up a $2B+-per-year business.
Today’s artificial tree market is worth an estimated $1.2B.
Today, 98% of all real Christmas trees on the market come from tree farms.
According to the USDA, there are 15k of these farms in the US, ranging in size from 2 acres to 9k acres. Though the market is largely stratified, the 434 largest farms control ~75% of the total supply.
At any given time, there are 350m Christmas trees growing on these farms in various stages of development — and in a typical year, ~25m will be harvested for sale.
Roughly 2 out of every 3 of them come from just 4 states: Oregon, North Carolina, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
There are at least 15 different varieties of Christmas trees
When the tree is around 2 years old, it graduates from the nursery to the “big leagues” and gets its own 6’x6’ plot of land out in the field. Most Christmas tree farmers aim to plant ~1.2k trees per acre of land.
What makes a Christmas tree an unusual crop is its extremely long production cycle: one tree takes 8-10 years to mature to 6 feet.
Today, 81% of the 96m Christmas trees Americans display each year are artificial. Only 19% are real.
(stats from TheHustle.co)
Another part of the “Christmas industry” that is seeing rapid growth is the professional light installation business. Professional light installation companies rake in $500,000-$750,000 in larger cities in a 90 day window. A lot of the light installation companies are full time light installation companies with year round operations, but others are plumbing, HVAC, lawn care, and other service businesses that tack on light installation services during the holiday season.
Check out this article for some inspiration to start your own light install company next year: This Man Told Us How He Turned Christmas Lights Into a Lucrative Business (PennyHoarder)
Newsworthy Links To Share
Farmland Draws Investor Interest with Inflation Running Hot: The value of U.S. farm real estate grew 7 percent in June from a year earlier, the biggest increase since 2014 (WealthManagement.com)
“Crazy Until It’s Not”: New Story Charity’s Bitcoin-Based Mortgages, NFTs and 3D-Printed Homes (NFX.com)
4 Commercial Real Estate Predictions For 2022 (Motley Fool)
Ledn raises $70M to grow Bitcoin-backed mortgage product (HousingWire)
New York Times names Euless,TX the best place to live in the United States based on various factors. The overall quality of life in Euless, with a population of just over 55,000, is considered excellent by residents.
REIT Investing 101: How To Value REITs (MillionAcres)
Indoor farming will change the industry slowly at first then rapidly as more and more people live in cities (Pitchbook)
For many millennials, the new American dream is one which reflects the world we live in today, global and connected, and who we are: adventurous, open-minded, curious and independent with short attention spans (Crunchbase)