Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 19, 1993 TAG: 9312220246
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
A good idea, a quality job, those are paramount, but a gimmick grabs the customers' attention, draws them in.
For five years, David Larsen's gimmick has been the panda. A 40-foot-tall, black-and-white, smiling inflatable panda.
If you've driven down U.S. 460 toward Christiansburg, you've probably seen it: about a mile past the mall, sitting there on its haunches, arms outstretched, welcoming folks to Brookfield Christmas Trees.
It's the eye-catcher for Larsen's Christmas tree retail business. And it's served him well.
Customers ``don't say the Brookfield Farm,'' says Larsen. ``They say the place where the panda is. They're real attention getters.''
But long before the panda, the size and reputation of Larsen's business caught the attention of thousands of people from across the country making their annual search for the perfect Christmas tree. After this Christmas, though, Larsen and his wife, Gaynell, will turn their own attentions elsewhere.
For once this year passes, the panda will be packed up, sold and shipped out. With it will go the last remnants of what was once the largest Christmas tree operation in the state.
``They were the biggest in Virginia,'' said Katherine Ward, secretary/treasurer of the Virginia Christmas Tree Growers' Association. Most operations were ``mom-and-pop'' jobs, working five- to 50-acre plots on the side. ``No one had that much land to devote to Christmas trees.''
At the height of the 25-year-old business, Larsen was growing 500,000 trees on 1,000 acres of land, selling more than 25,000 trees a season at up to eight area retail lots and off the farm.
``We didn't make the decision overnight'' to get out of the business, says Larsen, but around 1986 decided, ``we wanted to slow down.'' A glut was growing on the Christmas tree market and sellers' profits were falling.
Ward estimates that whether farmers grow white pines, Fraser firs or Norway spruces, the average price for a tree is $5 less than it was five years ago.
Last year was the final ``choose-and-cut'' held on the Larsens' farm in Floyd County. People used to travel from as far away as Charlotte, N.C., and Washington, D.C., to the farm, where they would be greeted by another giant gimmick: a 43-foot inflatable Frosty the Snowman.
While picking a tree, searchers would take hay rides and sip cider. On weekends, a team of horses pulled a wagon around the fields. From 1986-89, the Larsens ran a bed and breakfast out of their home, decorated with Yuletide spirit year- round.
``It was a Christmas experience,'' Gaynell Larsen recalls. ``It wasn't just to come and pick out a tree.'' Some customers traveled from afar this year, not knowing of the Larsens' plans, and have ended up at their Christiansburg lot.
``It becomes an emotional tradition,'' buying a tree, Larsen says. ``We`re getting to see a lot of the customers that we got to see over the years.''
But some of their faithful customers the Larsens never saw.
The success of mail-order catalogs gave David Larsen the idea to start up a mail-order tree business in 1979.
Nobody had ever tried it before, he says. ``Who would buy a tree sight-unseen? It's totally goofy.''
But Larsen tried it, shipping trees in specially-constructed boxes to New York, where UPS workers would deliver the 6-foot-tall white pines to high-rise apartments. Or down the coast to Florida, where the trees would arrive fresher than ones that would dry out on retail lots. Or across the country to California, Alaska or Hawaii.
Quality, convenience and goodwill were their trademarks.
The business brought them notoriety, and publicity. Early 1980s articles in the Wall Street Journal, Home & Garden and other national publications recognized the Larsens as the leader in the shop-by-mail Christmas tree business.
They sold that portion of the business three years ago to a tree grower in North Carolina. Other portions of the business have also been sold off piecemeal over the last few years.
The business as a whole started as a weekend hobby in 1968, when David Larsen planted 10,000 trees on Floyd land after moving from Oregon. He says he wanted to farm something that was ``forgiving.'' Christmas trees seemed right: ``They don't get out; they don't jump fences; they don't make the neighbors angry.'' He figured it would be easy work.
But, as he found out, ``it's a year-round job.'' There's trimming to be done, disease to be fought, up to 85 workers to round up during harvest season.
And there's the weather: it's unpredictable. Gaynell Larsen recalls knocking ice off the limbs of trees they were packing into boxes to be shipped during one winter storm. But out-of-state customers expected their trees on time, so the job had to be done.
The business ``just kept getting bigger and bigger and we bought more land and planted more trees,`` David Larsen says. But in the end, ``We wanted more discretionary time.''
Not that they're preparing to settle down. In business, they also mention the importance of having diverse interests.
He's been a chemistry professor at Virginia Tech for more than 25 years. The couple run a trailer park in Christiansburg and two more in Floyd. They own hundreds of acres of land - some of which will become Christmas tree-turned timber-producing.
They're ham radio operators, and have spent time traveling to Russia, the Ukraine and Bangladesh, helping set up ham radio operations and developing exchange programs. Larsen's university connections will augment their travel time, also.
``What aren't we going to do?'' Gaynell Larsen asks. ``We just have to choose and pick.''
Just like their Christmas tree customers.
931219 STORY x-mas tree r TOPIC tree retaile KEYWORDK AUTHOR:stephenfost12/19/93 1
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