After a long absence from our blog, it's time for an update :) From the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve day, we managed a Christmas Tree lot in Santa Clarita, CA. Santa Clarita is about 60 miles NE of Los Angeles in the high desert area of California. It was quite an experience ranging from selling trees in flip flops and shorts in 80 degree weather to wearing a hoodie and rain gear hoping the aqueduct behind the motor home won't over flow with all of the rain.
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| Check Out Stand |
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| Fraser Fir |
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| Wreaths & Candy Cane Water Fillers |
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| Flocked Tabletop Tree |
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| Flocked Wreaths & Boughs |
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| More Tabletops |
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| Flocked & Decorated Tabletop |
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| Decorated Tabletop |
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| Flocked Douglas Fir |
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| Zack Yslas fresh cutting a tree |
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| Jason & Andrew Castro setting up Tabletop trees |
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| Roger doing inventory on tree stands |
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| Tree Stand Display |
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| Ryan Miller & Irvin doing the daily tree watering |
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| Noble Firs |
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| Fraser Firs |
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| Zack - what a clown! |
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| Price of a tree with all the "trimmings" |
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| Under the Power Lines |
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We were so fortunate to have a great group of both return and new employees come work for us. Our zone manager, Patrick Delaney, was a gem and we wouldn't have been able to succeed without him. We met quite an assortment of interesting people and worked 13-15 hour days but the experience was wonderful! I can't, at this time, say we would do it again but; now that we've done it we have the hardest part past us. It is quite different selling trees in California vs Minnesota where the trees are frozen.
We sold $115K worth of Christmas Trees in 30 days, not to mention all of the extras like tree preservative, disposal bags, candy cane water fillers, stands etc. Most of our customers were very very nice people, but like anything else there are a few rotten ones in the batch. We had some very funny experiences for example: One gentleman wanted his tree shoved into the back seat of his new Jaguar even though we told him it wouldn't fit. When we proved to him that it wasn't going to fit, he then had us just plunk it on the top of his car - no blanket - scratching the heck out of his car. Then we had the customers who would come at all hours of the night wanting to know if we were open. Or the woman who thought that it was a drive-in tree service - she sat out in the parking lot honking her horn wanting us to tie a tree onto her roof. But then we had the customer who wanted to buy a flocked tree because she came last year with her mother and bought one and now her mother is deceased. Roger gave her a break on the price and it brought the woman to tears!
We met quite a few Producers, Directors, Stars and Workers in the Movie and TV industry, which of course you would never have happen in Minnesota. One of our customers was Linda Grey who played Sue Ellen in the TV series "Dallas". She was extremely nice and very polite! Roger didn't recognize her but I did. Sony Pictures came and purchased 15 trees one day for a "shoot". The Santa Clarita area is used as a location shoot for many TV shows, movies, and commercials. It is a very scenic area and we really enjoyed the area.
We'll be back to visit with our new friends and see some of the sites that we didn't have time to see.
Maybe next year, instead of Christmas trees, you could work as extras on the TV series being shot in the area. Who knows, you could be on the doorstep of stardom.
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