2. Context
It's impressive how much effort people put into decorating houses for Christmas in the US. This includes wreath on a door, nativity set on the front yard, lots of lightbulbs all over the house, and of course, Christmas trees inside & outside the house.
I'm not so big on home decoration, so I only have a small fake Christmas tree I purchased from Wal- Mart couple years back, but I noticed that some people get real trees even when they live in apartments (they often leave a huge trail of Christmas tree needles in the elevator).
In this report, I tried to explore the following:
•Are people buying more Christmas trees or less? How big is fake tree sales?
•How fast is the price going up?
•Where are Christmas trees grown? Where are they sold?
3. Real Christmas tree sales have been stable at ~29 million
trees for the past 10 years
33
25
31
27
28 28
31
29
33
27
0
10
20
30
40
2006
Year
2004 2007 2010 2011 2012 2013
Average
Ø 29
Real Christmas tree sales (million)
2005 2008 2009
Source: National Christmas Tree Association
Implies that roughly ~25% of households buy real
Christmas trees each year
4. Price has also been fairly stable
35
40
35
36
41
37
41 41
0
10
20
30
40
50
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Ø 38
2006 2007
Avg. retail value of real Christmas tree sales ($ per tree)
Source: National Christmas Tree Association
5. Fake Christmas tree sales is less than half of real trees, but
the retail value is roughly 1-to-1
69%
49%
51%
31%
100
40
0
20
60
80
Retail value of trees sold
(2013)
48 million $2,361M
# of trees sold
(2013)
%
Fake tree
Real tree
Source: National Christmas Tree Association
Avg. retail value per tree
$81
$35
2.3x
Break even
if used the
fake tree
for 3 years
6. 60%+ trees come from Oregon and North Carolina
Local farms, etc. only makes up 1/3rd of tree sales
7
38
22
33
60
80
100
20
40
0
%
2013
National chain
(Home Depot,
Wal-Mart, etc.)
Local locations
(farms, etc.)
Online & Other
Other retail lot
Location of sales Location of Production
OR
(37%)
MT
ID
WY
CA
NV
UT
CO
AZ NM
TX
OK
KS
NE
SD
WA
ND
MN
IA
MO
AR
WI
(4%)
IL
MI
(10%)
IN
OH
PA
(6%)
NY
KY
WV
TN
VA
NC(25%)
SC
MS
AL GA
FL
ME
DE
NJ
VT
NH
MA
RI
MD
DC
CT
LA
States protruding >10% of real Christmas trees in the US
States protruding 4-10% of real Christmas trees in the US
Source: National Christmas Tree Association
7. Disclaimer
This document is provided for general information only and nothing contained in the material constitutes a recommendation for the purchase or sale of any security. Although the statements of fact in this report are obtained from sources that I consider reliable, I do not guarantee their accuracy and any such information may be incomplete or condensed. Views are subject to change on the basis of additional or new research, new facts or developments.
