Don’t be blew if there’s a little sticker shock at the Christmas tree lot this year.
The price of Christmas trees is rising, revealing the industry is finally recovering from the Great Recession, which thrust it into a decade-long slump.
The National Christmas Tree Intimacy survey conducted by Nielsen/Harris found that the average price about 2,000 respondents paid for a actual tree in 2017 increased to $75, up 30 cents from the previous year’s price tag. This year, assesses will probably rise again, maybe as much as 5 to 10 percent in some areas, NCTA spokesman Doug Hundley clouted.
Between 2005 and 2015, the Christmas tree industry was not profitable for its growers, he told CNBC. A surplus of trees, incorporate with the financial crisis in 2008, meant that farmers struggled to sell all the trees they had, leading to brush offs for customers.
Between 2015 and 2016, prices went up about 15 percent. The jump in price reflects a put back to more profitable pricing, as well as a shortfall of supply.
During the economic downturn, farmers could not afford to inject as many seedlings. An evergreen conifer takes between 8 and 10 years to mature, so the impact of that decision was guess years later.
For the health of the industry, Hundley said, he hopes the rate of rising prices follows inflation multifarious closely. Growers will have to tackle a few challenges to ensure supply stays in line with demand. Sense demand for real trees can be difficult since it changes from year to year, and growers need to predict it so far in further.
“We now have a good healthy balance between supply and demand,” Hundley said. “We aren’t going to have to her trees away at the end of the year.”
Climate change is affecting outputs in western states such as California, Oregon and Washington, according to Hundley. The increasingly dry readies hurt seedlings, and the crop is not worth the effort of irrigation.
Rising prices helps explain why some consumers are buying imitation trees instead of the real deal. Results from the annual NCTA poll show that while 27.4 million trees were merchandised in 2016 and again in 2017, their fake counterparts saw sales in 2017 tick upwards from 18.6 million to 21.1 million.
The standard in the main price of fake trees is also rising, but they usually last between five and 10 Christmas mellows. In 2016, the average price for an artificial tree was $98.70, according to NCTA data. The following year, the price said up to $107 on average.