So much for sipping warm apple cider after taking a long hike into snow-covered mountains to pick out the perfect Christmas tree.
John Hanigan follows his own tradition by using the Internet to order Fraser firs for family friends from Omni Farms, which cultivates thousands of the trees on 120 hectares in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
All Hanigan needs is his credit card to complete his part of an annual family ritual of sending trees by mail to more than a dozen friends, a tradition his late father started in 1980.
That was before anyone dreamt about buying much of anything on a personal computer. For the past nine years, Hanigan has followed his father’s wishes and ordered trees for a select group of friends. Only now he
does it online.
”My friends really enjoy getting their tree this way,” said Hanigan, who lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland ”It has become a part of their Christmas.
”Besides, it’s really convenient to open your front door and have your tree come right out of a box,” he said.
”It’s one more thing to check off the to-do list.”
The market for online Christmas trees has grabbed the attention of executives at the nation’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The chain began selling Fraser firs on its Web site last year.
”This is a nice alternative for those customers who don’t particularly want to go out and deal with finding a tree, cutting it down, putting it on their car and bringing it home,” said Cynthia Lin, a representative for walmart.com.
Lin did not provide figures, but said sales are running well ahead of last year.
”We’re pleased with how it’s going,” she said. ”We chose this tree because given the variety of climates around the US, this tree seems to do well. And we can work directly with the supplier, who cuts them down as needed.”
While ordering a Christmas tree online is more expensive than going to a tree farm or roadside lot, all the extra services don’t add a lot to the price tag. For example, a 2-metre-tall Fraser fir that would sell for around $55 at a roadside stand costs $75 on Omni Farms’ web site.
Hal Gimlin (58) owns Omni Farms, which helped pioneer the
mail-order Christmas tree industry in North Carolina, shipping trees through the mail for 15 years.
A Federal Express truck pulled up at his farm outside West Jefferson, North Carolina, on Tuesday to pick up a final shipment of about 50 trees, which will soon be covered with colourful lights and ornaments in homes as far away as Hawaii, California and New York.
Gimlin said one of his regular customers sends him pictures of his children each year decorating their mail-order tree.
”Instead of going out to the mountains, the ritual now consists of the box arriving,” he said. ”It’s different, but it’s not as if they don’t get just as excited when the FedEx truck pulls up in the driveway.”
He now sells about 30 000 trees a year on the wholesale market. Gimlin also fills about 2 000 online orders from people who log onto Omni Farm’s web site. This year he sold every tree he could find that met his strict requirements for the online venture.
”All the new growth in this business is coming from this kind of thing,” he said. ”We’re a small family farm and it’s expensive to do advertising campaigns. On the Internet, people come looking for you.
”It’s not for everybody,” he said. ”The main reasons people buy their tree through me directly is convenience, followed by freshness and quality.”
Gimlin said it’s not difficult to provide a superior tree to online customers because of the quality of Fraser firs, which retain their soft and aromatic needles for a long time. He also ships them in boxes that are coated to retain the tree’s moisture.
But what about missing all the pomp and ceremony of a tree hunt?
”Some people want all that,” Lin said. ”This is for those people who don’t.” – Sapa-AP