The trees are grown usually on marginal land" that is of little agricultural value.
"It’s a crop like carrots, or cherry trees being cultivated for their fruit. "A real tree is an absolute sustainable product," said Malanga. Fake trees, which are shipped to the U.S. One area where real trees will always have the leg up is biodegradability. After the holidays are over, they are often chopped up, ground down and turned into mulch or used to improve animal habits.
They even came up with a spray that makes it smell like a real tree."
"From 50 feet away you can't even tell the difference. Media visibility aside, Corliss said the latest manufactured trees look a lot like the real thing. "For the farmers, if you don't see an uptick in sales within the first year, you just give up." Those probably cost more than our marketing budget for the entire country," Corliss said. "The fake tree people were investing in full-page ads in major dailies. Part of the reason the real trees didn't see a decline in sales was because there were more people purchasing trees than previous generations as baby boomers reached adulthood.Ĭorliss said that in the 1980s, concerned industry members began raising money to fund television marketing and advertising campaigns geared toward converting artificial tree advocates into natural tree buyers. By the time we woke up about it, it was the mid-80s and we were approaching 50 percent market share." "The industry didn't realize it at first because year after year we sold the same number of trees. "The shift has been going on for two generations since the 1970s when fake trees started encroaching on the market," Corliss said. Why are more people gravitating toward fake trees each year?Ī 40-year track record of poor marketing budgets, environmental impact misconceptions, and improved product lines are to blame for this trend, according to Jim Corliss, owner of Piper Mountain Christmas Trees in Maine and former president of the National Christmas Tree Association. Fake tree sales have more than doubled during that time, from 9 million in 2004 to about 21 million in 2017, according to the National Christmas Tree Association. The number of natural tree sales has remained relatively stagnant since 2004, oscillating between about 27 million and 33 million a year. But the real tree's marginal lead has wilted over time. In gross numbers, all-natural trees have always outsold their artificial counterparts. More: Here's why your family's Christmas tree is so expensive More: Here's what happens to unsold Christmas trees "Our clients aren’t reporting that at all."Ĭedar Grove Christmas Trees is a retail and wholesale company that is responsible for 50,000 real trees across the country, selling to local vendors, Walmart and Home Depot. "I've never heard of any of our fellow tree growers or sellers citing artificial trees as the source of decline in their business," said Rocco Malanga, the owner of Cedar Grove Chrismas Trees in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. Meanwhile, an increasing number of others drive over the hills to their local home goods store to buy a boxed up, plastic tree that will last for years to come.Īt face value, the perennial competition between artificial trees and the real deal may lean in favor of the phony, since weakening supply, rising costs and changing consumer behavior all work against Mother Nature's evergreens.īut the reality that tree vendors and farmers speak about is more optimistic, suggesting that the current state of the industry and it's future outlook isn't so pre-cut. Some families go dashing through the cold to pluck a short-lived evergreen fresh from the fields. But they're also at the heart of a debate that rages through the yuletide season: Is it better to have a real or a fake tree? Christmas trees are the heart of many holiday festivities.
0 kommentar(er)
