Dozens of retail e-commerce sites are shipping fresh-cut Christmas trees to customers like Rick Dungey, a communications manager for a Christmas tree industry association who likes the ease of ordering online.
“For me, ordering online is a great option,” says Dungey, who manages communications for the National Christmas Tree Association, a trade group representing about 1,200 tree growers and merchants. “I don’t have time to shop outside for a tree, but it takes me a few minutes to find one online, buy it, then have it dropped off at my door.”
Although it’s been difficult to get reliable figures of the number of Christmas trees sold online, the volume appears to be growing, Dungey says. His association lists about 50 retail nurseries that sell Christmas trees through their web sites, but that list doesn’t include other well-known retailers including Lands’ End that also sell Christmas trees, he says.
“Everyone thinks there’s a lot more businesses selling Christmas trees online than are listed on our web site,” Dungey says.
Most efforts to survey consumers about the number of Christmas trees purchased online have failed to produce a statistically significant number of responses, he adds. But one study that his association cites indicated that 4% of the trees were purchased online in 2007, when there were more than 31 million Christmas trees purchased in the U.S. overall.
Those figures would amount to about 1.2 million Christmas trees purchased online in 2007, but most members of the association doubt there were that many sold on the web, Dungey says, adding: "But even if it was only 1%, that’s till more than 300,000 trees sold online.”
Shipping is a challenge, and most orders are for trees under 8-feet tall so they can fit in standard 8-foot long tree-shipping boxes, Dungey says. He adds that only the sturdiest trees are recommended for shipping, including Fraser and Noble Firs, and that it’s important to ship the trees bound and wrapped in plastic to protect their needles.
Lands’ End sells Fraser Fir Christmas trees, from tree farms in the mountains of North Carolina, ranging from 4 to 5 feet at $129.50, to 8 to 9 feet at $299.50. Shipping charges range from about $18 for standard shipping that takes five to seven days including order processing, to about $38 for UPS Express shipping that takes three to five days.
Each tree is freshly cut the morning of shipment and delivered to the customer’s door, Lands’ End says. Lands’ End, located on the web at LandsEnd.com, is a unit of Sears Holdings Corp., No. 8 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
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