Live purchases preferred by consumers

RGS Christmas Trees owner Robert Bowen is watching for a rebound in sales from the past three years. Consumers stopped purchasing new, live centerpieces of holiday foliage by 4.3 million units nationally between 2007 and 2010. Artificial tree sales were also down during that same period by 9.2 million units, according to the National Christmas Tree Association.

Beginning with 4,000 units last week at his seasonal location at Main Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard in Houma, RGS offers one of the largest inventory selections in the Tri-parish region.

“All of our trees are live,” Bowen said. “We have blue spruce, Canaan fir, Scotch pine, Fraser fir and Black Hills spruce. We get all of our trees from Lake City, Mich. We actually fly up and hand tag and tie all these trees for a week. We then get [a delivery] of six 18-wheeler loads of trees. That is how we get a good quality of trees.”

Most consumers in the immediate area prefer Fraser fir, but Bowen explained that tree selection varies based on individual taste as much as popularity in given regions.

While tree lots like RGS have prices ranging from $15.95 to $45.95 or higher, industry leaders have listed $36.12 as the median price spent on live trees. With the median price applied to 27 million units sold in 2010, last year’s sales totaled approximately $976 million.

During 2010, artificial tree sales, with a median price of $64.41 and 8.2 million units sold nationally, accounted for approximately $530 million in retail value.

“One of the things we have noticed pretty strongly is that people under the age of 35 use farm grown trees at a much higher rate than the rest of the population,” National Christmas Tree Association spokesman Rick Dungey said.

According to Christmas Tree industry data, 85 percent of artificial trees are manufactured in China. With environmental concerns, Dungey said that live trees are preferred in terms of land use and disposal.

Dungey said that his organization encourages the purchase of live trees over factory generated artificial products. He noted recent years when coastal Louisiana parishes have used disposed live Christmas trees to assist in coastal restoration. “The build underwater fences that encourage growth and land mass,” he said. “Jefferson Parish won awards for doing that a number of years ago. You can’t do that with a plastic or metal tree. They won’t decompose. It is like throwing trash in your marsh.

“There are a lot of oddities that people think about trees,” Dungey said. “They think all kinds of real things about real trees that inhibit them from buying one.”

Issues addressed by the NCTA include the belief that the taking of live Christmas trees endangers natural forests. Dungey said that commercial Christmas trees are grown on farms, harvested and systematically grown like any other agricultural product.

Addressing fire concerns, both live and artificial tree sources contend that any danger is not directly related to the trees themselves, but often a blaze is started by overloaded electrical outlets or heat sources placed too close to the trees and packages under them. Research shows that the occasion of any Christmas tree accidentally catching fire is at a rate of 0.0004 percent, and that staged tree fires shown on television news programs are sensationalized.

Christmastreesgalore.com explains that artificial trees first came onto the market during the 1960s. “Artificial trees don’t shed their needles, the biggest complaint that most people have about real trees,” website writers said. “Besides, an artificial Christmas tree doesn’t make your hands or clothes sticky with sap and doesn’t require any watering or caring for. Unlike a real tree, your faux tree remains beautiful throughout the holiday season.”

Artificial tree manufacturers, argue that their products offer consumers a longer lasting product for the money and more variety, including some with lights and decorations already attached.

Bowen said that ordering trees has been constant for his business even during the national recession and overall industry downturn. “We’ve heard from a lot of people this year that had fake trees and want to go back to live trees,” he said.

Bowen said that standard tips for keeping live Christmas trees alive through the end of the year include keeping it watered and not placing it near a heat register. “We put a fresh cut at the bottom for customers to get rid of the sap and so the tree will drink water,” he said. “The customer really needs to keep that water in there. That’s basically it.”

During his first week of sales, Bowen said his numbers have looked positive. “We are selling a little more than we did last year on those [first days of the season],” he said. “Hopefully that trend will keep going.”

Gary Scott positions one of 4,000 pieces of inventory at R.G.S. Christmas Trees at Main Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard in Houma. MIKE NIXON