Traditions keep Christmas tree lots in business
Every year since the early ‘70s, members of the Applekamp family have moved to the same late-autumn rhythm.
They cut hundreds of Christmas trees at their northern Wisconsin farm, truck them to Milwaukee, set them up for display on a vacant lot, rent a hotel room for a month, and hope the trees sell.
They do, but it can be tough.
“This is a once-a-year paycheck,” Jason Applekamp said as he stood amid 200 balsam firs, Fraser firs and white pines in the Grandpa Vern’s Christmas tree lot, on S. 27th St. just north of Howard Ave.
“…Unless you enjoy it, there’s easier ways to make a living.”
And fewer seem to be choosing it. Across Wisconsin, the number of Christmas trees harvested annually has plunged in recent years. In the Milwaukee area, meanwhile, Applekamp sees fewer independent retailers who, like him, are willing to bet on a business with a selling window of just four weeks and a product as perishable as a bunch of ripe bananas.
“There’s not nearly as many lots as there used to be,” he said.
Festive attractions draw visitors to Christmas tree farms
But if the rewards might not be as great as they once were, there’s still money to be made in this seasonal business.
“It’s profitable,” said Ron Ivanis, co-owner of Sanfelippo Trees, also on S. 27th, at W. Abbott Ave. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be back.”
Ivanis has been selling trees in Milwaukee for a good 20 years, and the Sanfelippo operation predates him. He has 1,000 trees on S. 27th St. and about 500 more at a second lot he opened five years ago in Cudahy. He estimates he’ll sell about 1,350 trees this year.
“We ordered more and cut more this year, just because the weather forecast was a little calmer,” he said. “The nicer the weather is, the more people come out.”
Ivanis didn’t want to discuss profitability in detail, but another retailer, Patrick Kass, offered a partial glimpse into the industry's bottom line.
For the past 20 years, Kass has run The North Pole, a lot in Brookfield, on W. Capitol Drive, just west of Pilgrim Road. He sells about 1,000 trees a year.
A retailer buying a 7-to-8-foot balsam – the most popular tree – will pay about $20 wholesale, Kass said.
“We sell ‘em for $45 on our lot,” he said. “But then you’ve got, obviously, cost of labor, cost of shipping, that type of thing. So you’re clearing $10 to $15 a tree.”
The pricier Fraser firs – they don’t shed needles like the balsams – carry more profit. They wholesale for $25 or $30 on average, Kass said. He sells them for $75.
Like the Applekamps, Kass grows his own trees, on farms he and his parents own in Waushara County. Presumably that helps him financially by eliminating the wholesaler.
But growing demands much more labor, and carries risks. And for a non-growing retailer, the potential profit in moving 1,000 trees appears to be well within five-figure territory – nice, but not something that will make a person rich.
A key to success, all three retailers said, is repeat business.
“Most of our people I can tell by face,” Ivanis said.
Kass said as many as 85% of his sales might be to returning customers. Applekamp estimated his repeat business at nearly that high.
“Second generation, even,” he said. “You know, they’ve been buying for 30 years.”
He said that every Thanksgiving morning – while he’s still setting up and not yet officially open – the same family shows up “and gets four or five trees between grandma and grandpa, the kids and now the grandkids.”
Applekamp can relate. Grandpa Vern’s is a family affair too.
Jason Applekamp, 38, is at the lot for the duration. But his parents, Vern and Beverly, come down from their Oneida County home on weekends to help. Jason’s sisters show up too.
Jason and his father work the 80-acre tree farm, near Pelican Lake. Beverly makes wreaths.
“We have to do other things besides just Christmas trees,” Jason said. “It’s not that lucrative….We dig live trees in the spring and sell them to landscapers.”
RELATED: Caledonia home is a holiday wonderland
Wisconsin is the country’s fifth-largest Christmas tree producer, but national leaders Oregon and North Carolina harvest several times more.
And from 2002 to 2012, figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show, Wisconsin’s Christmas-tree producing acreage dropped in half. The number of trees harvested fell even more – from 1.6 million to 611,000.
“We have a lot of growers that have retired now that are passing away that didn’t have family members interested in the farm,” said Cheryl Nicholson, executive secretary of the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Association.
Nationwide, consumer purchases of live trees also appear to have trended downward somewhat in recent years.
According to the National Christmas Tree Association, an average of 28 million trees a year were sold at retail from 2008 through 2015. But sales for each of the last two years were only about 26 million.
Artificial trees – or “fakes,” as the National Christmas Tree Association describes them – are, of course, at the heart of the problem. The rival American Christmas Tree Association, which represents the interests of the artificial tree business, says its 2015 survey data showed that 81% of the trees Americans display in their homes are artificial.
Still, plenty of people want the tradition and scent of a live tree in their living room, and independent retailers continue to supply them.
“I haven’t seen new tree lots very often,” Kass said. “But the ones that have been successful have been pretty steady, and year after year they seem to be back in the same location.”