Tree Sellers Have Lots To Cry About

Christmas tree sales are about as skimpy as snowfall in the Inland Northwest this holiday season.

Tree lot managers blame warm weather, intense competition and even a weak Canadian dollar for the poor evergreen performance.

“It’s been a rough year,” said Lou Hannum, who was selling trees Saturday from the Super One Foods parking lot at U.S. Highway 95 and Kathleen Avenue. “There are six more lots (in Coeur d’Alene) than there were last year. Some have lost their shirts.”

Hannum, who owns the Trout Creek, Mont.-based Tuscor Ranch Trees and Wreathes, believes he’ll break even. The signs of operators with worse luck are all around him.

Just up the road at Highway 95 and Dalton Avenue, a sign on the gate of a fairly full tree lot announced it closed Friday. A few weeks ago, a long-established Lake City tree vendor tried to sell some of his wares to Hannum for $5 a tree.

“I know he paid $14 to $17 apiece for them wholesale,” Hannum said.

Part of the oversupply of trees is related to a dearth of Canadian customers. Most trees grown in North Idaho and western Montana go to Alberta, he said. This year the Canadian dollar is so weak that Canadian buyers didn’t take a lot of U.S. trees.

Hannum had one customer Saturday. But most people don’t wait until the last minute to purchase their Christmas trees. If they do, they usually can’t afford a tree and are searching for a bargain. “Which they get, of course,” he said.

Some of the late buyers are men who are forced from the couch to the tree lot. “Their wives chase them out - won’t let them watch football until they buy a tree,” Hannum said.

Down the road at Santa’s Tree Farm on Appleway, John Kunz had no customers by Saturday afternoon, prompting him to rethink whether to open today. “I think there’s so many lots around and so many trees that people got ‘em,” Kunz said.

And “people usually get them two weeks ago - the children demand it,” he said.

He also faults the weather. “It’s been too open and probably allowed people who don’t want to spend $25 to $30 for a tree to go out and cut one,” Kunz said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo