A champion at Christmas tree sales

[DainBramaged]

Retail sales down. Auto sales down. But there was a bright spot in metro Detroit this holiday season, in a tiny lot just south of the Shell station on Woodward north of 13 Mile.

There, for the last 17 years, Tom Muir has been selling live trees from his Ho, Ho, Ho lot in Royal Oak. Muir, 47, of Walled Lake said he parted with about 1,300 Fraser firs this Christmas.


QUESTION: Business was good for you?

ANSWER: It actually was up. The early numbers indicated that we were going to sell out early so we brought in a hundred extra trees from another tree lot out in Ann Arbor. ... Not as many people went out of town and people were willing to spend a little more as far as a Christmas tree and maybe back off on the number of gifts that they were getting this year. That's some of the feedback I was getting from our customer base.


Q: Your trees are from North Carolina. Why not Michigan?

A: The Fraser firs just don't grow as well here in Michigan. There's a higher altitude down there, longer growing season, that red Appalachian soil. And the Fraser fir is native to the mountains of North Carolina.


Q: I noticed you weren't open on Christmas Eve. ... I thought you might have some last-minute guys?

A: We do get a little bit of a scramble the last few days when people see us taking down our poles and our lights and whatnot. We get kind of a mad rush at the end. But we brought up that extra hundred and that took us right through till about Sunday or Monday before Christmas.


Q: You do have some remnants. What do you do with all your leftover trees?

A: In the past, we've called the Pontiac mission or some of the people in Royal Oak, and we will go ahead and donate them to people who can't afford a tree. But this year, we're right down to the very last ones, so...

http://www.freep.com/article/20081228/NEWS05/812280372