Money Doesn’t Just Grow on Those Christmas Tree Lots

OK, so you walked onto the Christmas tree lot this year, saw the $80 price tag on that 6-foot fir and figured you’d found the small business of your dreams. You work one month a year, rake in the dough, then fly off to the Caribbean to wash the sap out of your hair.

Keep dreaming, says tree lot veteran Kathy Anthony, co-owner of Sunland-based Kathy’s Trees on Foothill Boulevard, who says it’s not as easy as it looks.

For starters, count on $35,000 to $40,000 in upfront capital. That’s how much Anthony calculates it costs to stock her 2,000-square-foot lot before she has sold the first Scotch pine, paid the hired help or turned on the utilities.

And don’t forget about lot rental, liability insurance and government red tape. In city and state fees alone, Anthony figures she spent close to $1,000 this year for permits covering everything from land use and electrical wiring to cleanup and fire safety.

Like pressure? You’ll learn to love it when your entire season boils down to just a little over three weeks. A Los Angeles ordinance prevents city tree lots from opening before Dec. 1. That cuts Los Angeles Christmas tree sellers out of the Thanksgiving weekend trade, a time when many corporate clients buy trees for their lobbies.

Growers raised prices this year, but Anthony says she and her business partner decided to eat the increase rather than pass it along to customers. Their average tree sells for about $50, she says.

That’s been good for sales, but Anthony says she won’t know until this weekend just how profitable this season will be. She has never lost money, but there have been years when she barely broke even.

Don’t look for a tree in Anthony’s home. “I live with them for 30 days,” she says. “By the time Christmas rolls around, all I want to do is sleep.”

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Promoting Exports: When the going gets tough, the tough get exporting. That’s the strategy of local trade officials who are lobbying the state for funding to help small California firms search out new markets in the midst of global turmoil.

LA Trade, an export promotion program run by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, has linked up with nearly a dozen similar organizations statewide to form the CalTrade Coalition. These groups--sustained largely by Commerce Department grants--want the state to start kicking in some money, since the federal largess isn’t expected to continue indefinitely.

“The federal government from the outset indicated that they would be a partner in the start-up phase,” says Gregory Mignano, a consultant to LA Trade. “Now they’re pushing us to increase the state’s participation.”

Coalition members say their track record speaks for itself. Over the last four years, they say, they’ve assisted 675 California firms with 2,250 export transactions valued at more than $250 million--all on a combined budget of $3 million to $4 million a year.

Trade honchos are pressing the flesh in Sacramento to make sure their funding doesn’t dry up just as California exports are slumping.

“Now is the time to do something about it,” says Ezunial Burts, president of the chamber. “Exporting is too important to this economy.”

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SBA Head Count: In 1997, California had 837,802 businesses with employees, 99.2% of which were small businesses with less than 500 workers. That’s according to the Small Business Administration’s latest edition of its Small Business State Profiles, put out by the SBA’s Office of Advocacy.

The number of new firms increased 10.6% between 1996 and 1997, while new business incorporations increased 6.8%, according to the report. However, business failures increased by 19%.

For a more detailed profile of California and other states, check out the Office of Advocacy’s Web site at https://www.sba.gov/ADVO/stats/profiles/.

Marla Dickerson can be reached by e-mail at marla.dickerson@latimes.com.