SupplyChainX | Growing The Holiday Spirit

12.06.16

Spoiler alert: that Christmas tree didn’t arrive in your living room by sleigh.

If the 25-30 million Christmas trees sold in the U.S. each year are any indication, Americans love nothing more than the aroma of a freshly cut Douglas fir to spruce up their homes with holiday cheer. Cut-it-yourself sales at family-run farms eliminate the middleman for the ambitious Griswold families among us; for everyone else, pre-chopped trees can be purchased at garden centers or pop-up parking lot shops.

But how do all of those trees make it from forest to nursery, and finally to living rooms across the country? For Christmas tree farmers, the stakes are high: since Christmas trees are only profitable for about one month out of the year, any rupture in the supply chain can have devastating consequences. A highly methodical, nearly yearlong alpine journey ensures that businesses generate a sizeable profit from the Christmas crop, and that every family has the opportunity to trim the tree come December.

Learning To Measure Supply And Demand

In today’s fast-paced world, it is more important than ever to prioritize logistical flow. Never was this issue more apparent to the Department of Defense (DoD) than during Operation Desert Storm, when plans to accumulate supplies in the theater (aka the area of conflict) led to enormous confusion between the military branches.

As the HBR article points out, up until recently the four branches of the military were acting relatively independently -- it is only in recent years that the DoD has sought a cohesive supply chain management solution. It’s no wonder, then, that during what was among the largest deployments in U.S. history, the disjointed logistics system in place simply couldn’t keep up.

One of the supply chain’s greatest weaknesses during the Gulf War was that, while the military was able to move the necessary volume of supplies, once those supplies were in transit there was no system in place for organization and tracking. The contents of these containers, then, were uncertain until they reached their destination, leading to the aforementioned surplus of supplies -- and causing a great deal of confusion in an environment where clarity was crucial.

High Maintenance

While we may only be thinking about Christmas for one month out of the year, the farmers responsible for supplying our holiday trees consider it a yearlong commitment. The 15,000 Christmas tree farms around the country begin their preparations for the next year’s holiday season the moment the current season ends. Between the months of January and March, farmers replenish their harvest by planting one to three new seedlings for each harvested tree.

From the planting period onwards, Christmas tree growth is largely a waiting game (punctuated by attentive maintenance of the budding saplings, of course). On average, it takes eight years for a tree to reach the golden six-to-seven foot height customers most often seek. In the meantime, it’s a farmer’s job to teach a Christmas tree how to be a Christmas tree -- and since this is essentially the only crop sold “as is” to consumers, simply performing last-minute pruning won’t cut it. Over the years, trees are coaxed into taking the ideal Christmas tree shape, from skinny apartment-friendly varieties to massive trees fit for McMansion great rooms.

After eight years of upkeep, the most perfectly coiffed of the bunch have a chance at making it off the farm and into people’s homes.

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Harvest Time

Starting in September, growers inspect trees for pest infestation, discoloration, and general health. About 20-30% of the trees are then deemed salable and marked for harvest. When the time comes for harvest in late fall, tree-cutters topple up to 1,500 trees a day with chainsaws. The felled trees are gathered into bunches of about 10 to 15 -- and that’s when the excitement begins.

Small farms looking to maximize profits might opt to have customers chop down their own trees, or to sell them pre-cut at the farm. But for larger suppliers -- such as those located in Oregon, the largest producer of Christmas trees in the world -- the months of November and December involve quite the high-flying spectacle in order to provide places like Home Depot and Lowe’s with enough trees to meet the holiday demand.

With such numerous, bulky yields, harvesting and delivering each tree by hand would be impossible. And so, the bundles of trees take to the air. The 800-pound bunches are hooked to helicopters with strong cables, dangling from the skids as they travel from farm to warehouse. A single helicopter is able to transport as many as 800 Christmas trees in an hour. Once at the warehouse, the trees are prepared for shipment. First, they enter the “shaker,” a contraption that removes dead needles. Then they’re tied up with a rope, and after a final nip and tuck, the trees embark on the next leg of their journey.

Now Coming to a Store Near You

Transport from the warehouse to the retailer comes with its own set of challenges. At high-tech warehouses, palletizer devices stack trees into a 30-tree-high compact cube. Without such gadgets, tree loading is an arduous process, since each tree must be loaded and unloaded individually.

From the warehouse, the 2,000-pound cargoload snakes across the country in shaved ice-filled truck beds, while some board refrigerated ships to an international destination. For example, Oregon’s trees deck the halls in far-flung locales like Malaysia, Dubai, and Guatemala, as well as along the West Coast.

This high-wire process of delivering trees to retailers also necessitates some luck in avoiding winter storms. Christmas snow might be romantic, but it’s devastating for farmers who need to get their crop in primo roadside locations before Christmas. Once the trees have made it safely to the lot, there’s still one more journey in store: parking lot to living room. For those who want to avoid the hassle of bungee-cording a tree to their car rooftop, there’s an app for that: shoppers can now order an Uber to deliver their tree.

Who knows -- maybe this whole process would be easier if Christmas trees could be transported by sleigh. For now, we can rely on a well-executed supply chain to deliver our annual Christmas cheer.