How to Start a Christmas Tree Shop
If you’re one of the progressive business-minded people of our time, then you should aim to start a business that’s just right for the yuletide season. The Christmas tree is perhaps the most significant symbol of Christmas; it’s a best-seller during the Christmas season, and you will learn how to start a Christmas tree shop in this post.
Christmas tree shops are getting more patronage each year. In recent times, Christmas tree shop owners are starting to find better ways to make sure that their business doesn’t have to shut down after Christmas, and they’ve come up with other uses for their Christmas tree shops.
In the early stage of opening your Christmas tree shop, you’ll be involved in most of the important aspects, including sales. Your ability to persuade people to buy from you and feel good about it will guarantee sales. Also, your negotiation skills will play a major role in helping you pay less for quality Christmas trees and other vital equipment for your business.
Is starting a Christmas tree shop profitable?
A Christmas tree shop is one of the most patronized business centers during Christmas periods and they record massive sales during that time of the year. The average Christmas tree costs between $58 and $80. Christmas tree shop owners who also plant Christmas trees make money through more than one means. They can decide to be just distributors, and get paid by other Christmas tree shop owners or retailers, or sell their Christmas trees as producers, wholesalers, and retailers.
Besides the direct sales of Christmas trees, you can turn your shop into the complete Christmas shop by incorporating other elements of the Christmas season celebrations. The obvious things you could add to the list are Christmas tree decorations. It would be convenient for any customer to buy the necessary Christmas decorations where they bought the tree. The Christmas tree lights, the star or angel on the Christmas tree, and Christmas lights are some of the items you should consider because they make Christmas tree shop owners extra income.
The major disadvantage of owning a Christmas tree shop is that it’s a seasonal business. Every entrepreneur wants each day at the office or shop to be like- if not better than- their best days of sales. Unfortunately, starting a Christmas tree shop does not afford you that luxury. However, you could convert your Christmas tree shop to something else while it is not yet Christmas season, that way, you’ll still be making money.
What’s the best period to open a Christmas tree shop?
As the name implies, Christmas trees are specially used for a particular time of the year, which is Christmas. The best time to start a Christmas tree shop is during winter seeing that there will be high demand for it by then. After the Christmas season, Christmas trees lose their touch and everything goes back to normal. Knowing this, it would not be the ideal to open a Christmas tree shop throughout the year. Apart from during the Christmas season, people rarely buy Christmas trees. Perhaps the only time you’d get a customer after Christmas is if there’s a movie or video production with a Christmas theme that’s in need of a Christmas tree. A month or two before Christmas is the best time to start a Christmas shop. Closing down your Christmas shop does not mean that your Christmas tree plantation would be affected, you can keep tending the trees until they are needed.
How does location affect the sale of your Christmas trees?
The first way the location of your shop affects your Christmas tree sales is that it would determine whether to sell Christmas trees or not in the first instance. Christmas trees symbolize a certain belief in Christmas, and even if not everyone who celebrates Christmas is of the Christian faith, it holds a strong significance to Christians. There are many regions where they either don’t believe in Christmas or celebrate anything related in those periods- that’s a red flag. Before you set out to get a shop for your Christmas tree sales, be sure you are in a neighborhood that values Christmas and sees Christmas trees as an important part of the celebration.
The location will also tell you what exactly to sell. Christmas trees come in different sizes, and while some have real barks, stems, and leaves, others are made of synthetic material. To some people, they don’t care about the authenticity of the Christmas tree as long as it looks like one. Whether it’s the real deal or something synthetic, it’s up to your customers- they get to decide. If half the time, customers who enter your shop asks for a synthetic Christmas tree, don’t be discouraged; restructure your business plan and make provision for probably 50% original and 50% artificial Christmas trees.
The completion will also play its role in determining how you will price your Christmas trees, and ultimately what you should expect to make. The number of competitors in the area where you intend to open your shop will impact the number of customers that will visit your store. Study the market, particularly your competitors, and find out how much they sell their Christmas trees. If you undersell, you may not be making as much money as you should. And if you oversell, you might lose your customers before they get a chance to see what you have to offer.
Should you plant your own Christmas trees or buy from others?
There’s no wrong or right way to start a Christmas tree sales business, you will make your earnings regardless of whichever route you take. However, planting your Christmas trees for sale is different and has its own benefits compared to buying from other Christmas tree farmers.
Planting Christmas trees require a large parcel of land to plant a number of trees and tend them. This process will cost you more money because you’d either have to buy farmland or lease one for the cultivation of your trees. Apart from paying from the farm, you’ll pay workers to work on the farm from planting through harvesting, and it will also cost you money to groom the trees because they take a long time to grow to their full potential. When the trees are harvested, you’d need to haul them to the shop for sale, and that also costs money. You’d end up spending a significant amount of money before your trees get to your shop most times.
On the other hand, if you concentrate on being a retailer, you’d have less to worry about in the way of spending since the owner of the trees would have taken care of everything. All you may have to do is figure out how to get the trees to your shop, which with proper planning should not be a problem. However, you’d be spending quite a lot on each Christmas tree you purchase. After getting the trees to your shop, you’d need to make a price list that would see you make a profit on each Christmas tree. The disadvantage of this concept is that if you’re in direct competition with a Christmas tree shop which grows the trees they sell, their Christmas trees would be cheaper than yours.
How to open a Christmas tree store
Understand the nature of Christmas trees
Before you start your Christmas tree shop, you would have considered the options of planting your products for sale or buying from a different tree farmer. Whether you are interested in producing the Christmas tree you are to the seller not, it will do your business a lot of good if you knew a thing or two about how Christmas trees came to be.
Christmas trees take up to eight years to mature into full-blown trees and they can be harvested when they are between five and seven feet tall. Christmas trees are not all the same; neither do they all grow under the same conditions. Different regions are known for the types of Christmas trees they grow, like the Douglas fir tree which is dominant in the northwestern part of America. On the other hand, the Scotch pine can grow in almost every part due to its deep root’s compatibility with a variety of soil and climate conditions.
It would take acres of land to grow a sustainable amount of Christmas trees. The first three to four years of planting a Christmas tree will not be stressful, but the real work starts from the fifth year. By the time the trees start growing, they’ll need to be pruned and looked after by skilled hands, and if you have a small Christmas tree farm, it is best if you did it yourself as it would save you money. After harvesting Christmas trees, you can engage in re-planting exercises- it will save you money and you’ll never run out of Christmas trees to plant.
Knowing how these processes occur will give you more insight into how the Christmas tree sales industry works, who does what, and where to go to in order to get the best deals. With in-depth knowledge of the industry, you could find yourself delving into other aspects of the business you can venture into since you already know so much. Detailed information such as this will also boost your sales as customers will be sure they’ll get extra tips on how to maintain and preserve their Christmas trees until the next Christmas.
Plan your Christmas tree shop
Owning a Christmas tree shop comes with a level of uncertainty and some challenges. How well you plan it will determine how much chance of survival it will have. Therefore, you must make a concrete business plan before you open a Christmas tree store. A poorly planned Christmas tree shop will crumble. Due to the nature of the market, you must prepare for every possible outcome and document them. While you aim to carry out your feasibility studies on the market, you should ask critical questions. For a Christmas tree shop, particular questions like these should be looked at:
- What is the nature of the Christmas tree shop?
- How much will it cost to run it without having to cultivate the Christmas trees?
- How much will it take to start the shop if you decide to be both producer and seller of Christmas trees?
- How many people will you need from planting, harvesting, selling, to delivering Christmas trees to customers?
- How long will it take before you make your money back?
- What are your realistic expectations after a certain period?
- Who do you see as your prime customer?
- Where will you open your Christmas tree shop?
- How many Christmas trees do you hope to sell daily, or weekly?
- How much of the whole process will your budget cover?
- If your budget won’t be enough, how do you intend to source funds, and where?
- When Christmas is over, how do you continue to make sales?
It’s better if you asked the tough questions and find honest answers to them before making vital moves. The data you get from these findings and more will be made into a document that will be your business plan for the Christmas tree shop. As soon as you sort out your business plan, register it. The registration process is not as tedious as requesting a permit- you won’t need too many documents for it. Once you come up with a business strategy, a name, and a comprehensive plan, you can have it registered at an affordable rate. Your Christmas tree shop has the potential to become a household name in the market- do all that’s necessary to make it a legal entity as soon as possible.
Acquire the necessary permits
For your Christmas tree shop to run smoothly there is a need for you to sign all the essential documents and fill all the forms available to you. Get all the necessary permits sorted before you attempt to take the next vital step. If you are going to grow the Christmas trees, then you would need a permit to operate a farm and adhere to government regulations concerning agricultural practices. Your farmland might need to be inspected every once in a while to make sure it is safe for farming activities and that the quality of produce meets the required standard.
Also, when you set out to open your tree shop, you would get a permit to run your business. There are laws in place to check the practices at different establishments and business centers; therefore, put your house (or shop) in order, and get prepared to secure a permit. In order to get the license you need, you must pay a visit to the authorized body which grants permits and licenses for new businesses. That way, you’ll know what you’ll need in order to have a shot at getting a permit. Once you get the necessary permits, you are free to start your business according to the state’s laws.
Find an ideal Christmas tree store
Finding a suitable shop to sell your Christmas trees is not a straightforward process. You have to take a few things into perspective before deciding on the shop you’ll rent or lease. Firstly, make sure that you know the ways of the people and their reception of Christmas trees in the area, and also be sure of what type of Christmas tree they fancy. When that’s sorted, look for a shop that can be easy for your customers to locate. If the location of your shop will not favor the use of cars, it would be a problem. The average Christmas tree would be nearly impossible to carry on one’s shoulders for an extended period.
How big is the store? How many Christmas trees can it contain? Be sure that the shop will be big enough to contain the number of Christmas trees you will bring in before you pay for it. And as soon as that part is sorted, bring in an extra worker or two to help you carry the trees to the shop, set up the shop, and attend to customers.
Organize your business
The business you are getting into needs to be properly managed so that no facet will be lacking. When there are loopholes in this sort of business, it could cost its customers. The moment you have registered your business, create a concrete structure, this process is more practical in nature than making a business plan. In the process of structuring your business to meet the demands of your customers, you must create an environment where customers feel like they will always get the quality they crave.
Let quality be your policy, regardless of whether you’ll be adding artificial Christmas trees to your list of items sold or not. And then, make your business as helpful and professional as possible. You should structure your Christmas shop in such a way that there will be options for payment separate from the conventional cash-over-the-counter type. Then there should be room for additional services like hauling the Christmas trees from your store to the customer’s address. Let your business be known for something positive- excellent customer service, prompt delivery, affordable rates, and quality Christmas trees.
Get up to speed with goings-on around the Christmas season
Knowledge is power, and the more you get it, the more you have an advantage over the rest in the business. As you intend to start your Christmas tree shop, get yourself in a position where you’ll be able to access information that could affect your industry.
If you produce the Christmas trees you sell, there will be a need to keep an eye out for the latest happenings in the agriculture sector.
Being conversant with everyday dealings in the industry will make you stay out of practice that could put you in trouble. And such knowledge could also ensure that you don’t miss out on anything positive as you run your business. In addition, you will be aware of other unconventional ways of the industry like pricing and the latest machinery in the business.
Promote your Christmas tree shop
Since Christmas trees don’t need a highly structured form of advertising, although helpful, use the most available and affordable means to promote your business. Forget TV adverts; you should focus on one-on-one and digital marketing. Promoting your shop on digital platforms will get you a good number of potential customers showing interest in your goods. The beauty of advertising online is that the better the images and story that goes with them, the better the reception of the message.
There are options for having an online store or a traditional brick and mortar Christmas tree shop. Your business can be listed on online platforms where they can market their products, like Craigslist, and more, for interested persons to contact them.
You may need to hire a professional photographer to take pictures of the trees you have in stock and then you’d post them online. The quality of the image is one of the factors that will entice potential customers. Use every social media platform to promote your shop, including joining virtual groups of those in the category of your target customer in order to promote your business.
Using technology and the internet to market your business shouldn’t be the death of meeting people face-to-face and telling them about your shop. Wherever you go to- parks, social or religious gatherings- be sure to spread the word about your new Christmas tree shop.
Conclusion
Just like other Christmas business ideas, opening a Christmas tree shop is profitable only if you run it wisely. The average Christmas tree shop will not make it if all they sell are Christmas trees; therefore, one has to improvise. To make the most of the seasonal nature of the business, use the shop for other means or sell other items in there as most other Christmas tree shops do. With proper planning, you’ll run a thriving Christmas tree shop…and more.