Holiday Lighting: Unwrapping Sales

Many contractors incorporate holiday lighting into their businesses because
it helps them retain employees through the cold, winter months, and ensures
less of a springtime headache since contractors don’t have to start from the
beginning and rehire entire crews while securing jobs.

In fact, this was Perficut’s intention when it started offering holiday
lighting three years ago. “Originally, we did offer the service to help keep
some employees busy,” explained Kory Ballard, president of the Des Moines,
Iowa-based company. “But once we got started, we realized it was an
excellent profit center as well as giving us an opportunity to get in the
door with new clients. If ran correctly, it can generate excellent profits
in a short amount of time.”

Ten years ago, Swingle Tree & Landscape Care also initiated a holiday
decorating service as a way to keep crews busy. At first, the company
subcontracted its people to an interior holiday decoration company, but then
six years ago, it purchased a holiday-specific franchise and was able to
hang on to employees from November to mid-February, according to Jeff Oxley, the Denver, Colo.-based company’s director of operations.

Today, Swingle Tree does $750,000 in Christmas lighting and the service
generates gross profits ranging from 35 to 52 percent, Oxley pointed out.
Last year, the company even put a full-time person in charge of the holiday
department and continues to carve out a niche market in the area, selling
not only Christmas lighting, but outdoor decorations and lighting for
weddings, grand openings and graduation parties.

In Michael Hornung’s case, the service even provided employees with
something new to look forward to at the end of each year, said this
president, Valley Green, St. Cloud, Minn. “It’s so different from lawn
care - it’s such a different mindset customers are in when you’re dealing
with them for holiday lighting,” he explained, adding that employees are on
a property longer with holiday work unlike lawn care where they are in and
out of client’s landscapes.

“One employee was dreading it because he hated dealing with clients, particularly one who always gave him a hard time when he was on her lawn. Then, when dealing with her for holiday lighting, she was happy and actually thanked him after the job was done because she was so impressed with the way it looked. Clients don’t think of it the same way as they think of lawn care. Now, this employee is requesting to be a part of our holiday service every year.”

Sometimes improving retention isn’t the major reason to add the service,
though. In R.A.R. Landscaping Co.’s case, holiday lighting wasn’t something
everyone was doing in Baltimore, Md., so it seemed like a viable service
option to tack onto the business in 1998. And the tremendous amount of free
local press that followed didn’t hurt sales, said company Vice President
Allan Davis. “It was such a unique service in our area that we got decorating related press and human interest press and press in business sections, he pointed out. “Now, the more lights and décor that go up, the more people ask for it.”

R.A.R. Landscaping does mostly commercial work and 20 percent of its clients invest in holiday decorating, but this number continues to grow, Davis
remarked. His best customers are those who manage strip shopping centers.
“Most tenants in these buildings pay money into a common area maintenance
account and they are thrilled when their funds are used for something that
makes them look good and draws shoppers in,” he said.

Even after Sept. 11 and during last year’s recession, people continued buying lighting, pointed out Hornung, whose business grew from 40 to 70 clients last Christmas. “People wanted to stay home and get back to the basics,” he said. “They didn’t want to travel for Christmas - they wanted a nice holiday at home where they could cut down a tree and relax.”

Oxley also was concerned about holiday lighting sales last year and with marketing efforts, Swingle Tree still grew this department 12 percent. And
Ballard thinks the economy has rebounded in his local market - plus, high-end clients didn’t seem too bothered with recession woes. “Our high-end clients are not as concerned with price,” he said.

The author is Managing Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at nwisniewski@lawnandlandscape.com.