Christmas tree sales duo weather ups, downs, droughts, new location

It has been nearly 40 years since Ben Miller, in a partnership with friend, Charlie King, started a Virginia pine tree farm down in Cusseta, Ga., just south of Columbus. Called Kimi Farms, their plan was to be wholesale suppliers in the Christmas tree market.

That venture lasted nearly a decade, with Miller deciding in the late 1980s that he would rather not be a middle man and instead operate his own tree lot in Columbus. His first was on Macon Road, and he had a couple of more through the years before landing at a highly visible spot on Bradley Park Drive across from Target.

This year, that property just happens to be where a new Burger King is being constructed. And it has forced Miller and his nephew, Gilbert Miller, to plant roots in another location about a mile away at 2300 Whittlesey Road. (That’s in front of Ensminger Crane Service.)

“I’m excited that we were able to find a lot that’s the size that we need, and is as visible as it is,” Ben Miller, 61, said recently. “Of course, like I tell everybody, we’ll probably match that other lot for size and location. But this is pretty good now. Since they widened that road, there’s a lot of traffic. We wanted to try to stay in the area. We feel pretty good about it.”

Through the years, Miller’s Kimi Farms operation has weathered economic upturns and downturns, good and bad weather itself, and climate-based peril such as the extreme drought that has plagued the Southeast for the past few months. That includes the wholesale tree farms in western North Carolina, where the aromatic Frasier firs are grown for sale on Columbus lots.

The Ledger-Enquirer visited recently with the Millers, uncle and nephew, to discuss their jobs as Christmas tree salesmen, what it takes to succeed, and what customers should do with their trees this year because of the dry weather. This interview is edited a bit for length and clarity.

Q. How long had you been at the Bradley Park Drive location?

A. Gilbert: Almost 15 years. It started there a little after 2000.

Q. What does it take to make a successful tree lot?

A. Gilbert: It’s about remembering your customers, and customer service. But, really, it’s the whole thing. We partner with these same farms for years up in western North Carolina, and they committed to cut just before they ship. If we have any issues with the trees, they’ll honor anything that was destroyed during the shipping or that we weren’t satisfied with. They also allow us to pull inventory down. So we can commit to a certain number of trees and, if we feel sales are good enough, we can get another load in — or not. So it’s managing that side and it’s managing the people (working at the lot). That’s always a challenge when you’re managing a lot of young kids that are working.

Q. They’re part-timers?

A. Gilbert: They are. We’ve got a lot of seasonal help and people that have been working for us almost 20 years, and this is their seasonal job on top of their regular job. They start right after they finish work at 3 or 4 o’clock and they’ll come in and work until 10 at night … For people with jobs that don’t get bonuses at the end of the year, to be able to do this counts as a way to buy Christmas presents and take care of some bills. We have a great relationship where they come in and know we’re going to ask them to work hard, because there’s nothing easy about doing this ... But they’re like family, a lot of them.

Ben: A lot of these guys that come in and work, they count on the money they’re going to make off the lot. It’s a big deal for some of them that work here.

Q. Do you see customers from your first year of tree sales years ago?

A. Ben: Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, we see children that are now grown and they’re coming in and buying trees.

Gilbert: And some of people working for us this year are the children of some of the original employees that worked with Ben when he first started the tree lot.

Q. What’s the schedule like for you guys?

A. Gilbert: In the mornings, we typically start around 8 o’clock doing deliveries all around town. We take as far north as LaGrange and I guess as far south as Seale in Alabama. The doors of the tree lot are typically open at 10 a.m. and we’ll work at least until 10 o’clock at night.

Q. That’s long hours on your feet?

A. Ben: You don’t have any choice.

Gilbert: It’s really only four weeks. That’s what I tell everybody. The minute you start, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. On Dec. 25 these things don’t sell very well. It does progressively get easier. Our biggest weekends are (Thanksgiving) weekend and the following weekend. Once you’re through that, that’s really the sprint, and the rest is about pacing yourself.

Q. Things can get pretty hectic?

A. Ben: It better be, or we’d be crying. (laughs)

Q. How has they drought impacted the quality of this year’s trees?

A. Gilbert: Visibly, they won’t see any difference. The tree will feel a little bit lighter because there’s not as much moisture in the tree. And it’s even more important this year that people actually put it in water and care for it the way you’re supposed to because they have been under drought stress. Like any crop — this could be tomatoes, hay, you name it — anything that’s been under drought stress is a lot more susceptible to just flip over and die. Part of our relationship with our farmers is that they’re cutting them just before shipping, whereas a lot of big-box retail stores start cutting theirs at the end of October and stacking them up. In this kind of year, I would be terrified about selling those trees.

Q. The main thing this year is to keep the trees watered?

A. Gilbert: Water it. And you don’t want an air vent directly on it, or a spotlight directly on it.

Q. What’s the most challenging aspect of selling trees?

A. Ben: When you get to be 62, it ain’t quite as easy as when you’re 30. (laughs) The challenge, I guess, because it’s such an intense business for about two weeks, is to try to get your (tree lot) layout the way you want it, especially on a new lot like this, where the customers can get to everything. You have to get it all set up ... We also try to make sure we have enough help, and when they want to pay or order or whatever, that we can do that.

Q. This is a labor of love of sorts for you?

A. Ben: Yeah, I enjoy it. I enjoy a lot of the people that we come in contact with.

Q. How about wreaths and garland?

A. Ben: We do a pretty good business. It used to be we would throw all of the limbs away.

Gilbert: We did. We got started doing (wreaths and garland) because a lady walked up and wanted to do a few wreaths for us so she could swap those for a Christmas tree. Ben let her make them and we thought, wow, these are pretty good. She stayed on a week that first year and then she came back. Literally from that to now, it’s just exploded. We do customer orders in the middle of November for corporate clients, and we’ll make wreaths up until the day we close. We just crank them out.

Q. What size of trees do you have and at what price range?

A. Gilbert: We have little 3-foot trees that are $20. But (larger trees for the house) start around 5 to 6 feet and they’ll be anywhere from $30 to $35, all the way up to 14-footers over there that go all the way to $400 by the time it’s delivered to your house. Most people that buy those aren’t putting them up themselves. But that 6-foot to 9-foot range, it’s anywhere from $45 to about $90 to $100.

Q. How much is delivery and setup?

A. Gilbert: It depends on where you are in town, but it’s anywhere from $30 (for those closer) to around $50 for the folks that are farther north.

Q. What’s the worst selling weather and the best selling weather for you?

A. Gilbert: You want it to be cool and cloudy. Just visually, when you look at it, it looks like winter. Anytime those clouds cover up the sun in the afternoon, it’s like someone’s just opened the gate and they come pouring in here. But when you get a heat wave and it gets up into the mid-70s, you can see it. People will say it when they come out here: Gosh, it just doesn’t feel like Christmas.

Q. How about rain?

A. Gilbert: A little drizzle doesn’t hurt. But a lot of rain can wash things out. We watch the numbers and we know if it rains one day, the people that are going to come that day will come the next day. But if it rains two days in a row, we lose customers.

Ben: We don’t think they shop around enough. Some of them probably don’t reach us. If there’s enough rain and people are looking around, the first place they get to is where they’ll get the tree.

Q. That’s why it’s critical to develop loyalty?

A. Ben: There’s not question about that.

Gilbert: We go so far as to take returns. If somebody has a tree that they’re not happy with and they call us up, sometimes we’ll go get it. But if they bring a tree back and say, we don’t feel like this tree is going to make it, we’ll swap them out.

This story was originally published November 25, 2016 at 10:33 PM with the headline "Christmas tree sales duo weather ups, downs, droughts, new location."