by David Chapman
Staff Writer
Area businesses capitalized on Black Friday turnouts around Thanksgiving, but shoppers and travelers scurrying about Northeast Florida might have noticed another business setting up shop for its unofficial selling-season kickoff over the weekend. And to many, their appearance means the holiday season is truly in full swing.
From grocery and hardware stores to roadside lots every few miles, Christmas trees are plentiful.
“For many people, seeing them does mean Christmas time,” said Tommy Barnhart, who sells trees for the Severt’s Tree Farm lot off San Jose Boulevard and Old St. Augustine Road. “It’s an annual tradition.”
It’s become an annual tradition for Barnhart, too. For the past 10 years he’s come from his Charlotte, N.C., home to the Mandarin area to sell trees for Severt’s, which has more than a dozen lots in the area.
He sells wholesale produce for Severt’s in the offseason, but like many others, when the holidays approach it’s time to hit the road and see some familiar faces.
“I do like it,” said Barnhart, referring to the business and annual trip. “It’s a chance to come down and see many old friends and regulars who’ve come and bought a tree each year.”
Barnhart and Severt’s opened their lots the weekend before Thanksgiving and keep a healthy inventory of a wide variety of trees throughout the season. Over the last few years, sales have been fairly steady, but Barnhart said he has seen the effects of the down economy — some people have turned to an artificial tree, others downsized, but the business is cyclical.
Greg Sutton sees the cyclical nature of the business, too.
A Jacksonville native, he’s been selling trees and assisting with Coaches’ Tree Lot along a stretch of Beach Boulevard east of the Intracoastal since he was a teenager. The lot originated in 1954 when his uncle, Wimpy Sutton, and two other Fletcher High School coaches began selling trees for supplemental income and to raise money for Fletcher athletics.
“I’ve been doing it since I was a kid,” said Greg Sutton. “It’s a great change of pace for me … it’s different. It’s getting in there and getting your hands dirty. ”
It is quite the change for Sutton, who is a sales director for Florida Combined Life, a Blue Cross Blue Shield subsidiary. He takes some vacation time during the holidays to tend to the lot, a time he looks forward to each year for more than just doing a little different style of work.
“You do see a lot of familiar faces,” he said. “We’ve been around a while … you see parents whose kids are now buying trees, a lot of families.”
The economy has affected sales some, said Sutton, but Coaches’ still usually achieves its goal of selling its allotment that comes from North Carolina and Michigan. Thanksgiving weekend — a generally good sales period — was strong and gives Sutton optimism that this year will be another success. Weekends in general are busiest, as it’s when close to 80 percent of his business occurs.
On the national level, the Thanksgiving weekend was strong for one recognizable business that claims to be the largest Christmas Tree retailer in the world.
“I think what we saw was a lot of traffic during and since Black Friday,” said Craig Fishel, a spokesman for Atlanta-based Home Depot, which uses 25 different growers across the U.S. and Canada. “Some people do stall (to buy trees) but it is just that time.”
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