DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
A grinning Mata Sua showed off his Christmas trees, for sale at the corner of Lowrey Avenue and East Manoa Road, Saturday. He said his trees range in price from $15 to $75.
Spirit of Christmas,
cut rateBig-box discounts and
a huge surplus of trees lead
to last-minute $1 prices
and giveaways
Mahinalani Ratliff closed down her Christmas tree lot at Koko Marina Center in Hawaii Kai for the season Saturday afternoon, even though she still had 200 trees left in stock and three more shopping days until the holiday.
"Last year, there was a shortage," she said while picking up stray bows at the site yesterday. But this year, "there's a lot of sellers all over the place."
With the surplus and competition from big-box stores selling trees at low prices, Ratliff doesn't see herself getting much more business this season.
And Christmas tree sellers around the island are saying the same: that they've got plenty of trees and few residents interested in buying.
Retailers are attracting customers through deep discounts, with some stores selling trees as low as $1 and others giving up and giving away.
"You can go to McDonald's and order a happy meal and get a free Christmas tree," joked Ray Griego, assistant manager at the Mililani Wal-Mart, which marked their trees down to a buck yesterday.
Just to get trees out the door, Griego has had to slash prices from as high as $70 after Thanksgiving down to $25, then $15, $10, then $8, $5 and finally $1.
DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
The Chai family took advantage of low Christmas tree prices Saturday at a lot on the corner of East Manoa Road and Lowrey Avenue. Alexander Chai, 7, helped load the tree into the car as father Sun-Ki Chai, left, mother Hye-Ryeon Lee and sister Madeleine looked on.
By midafternoon, Griego still had 1,000 of the 5,600 trees he'd started with left in stock. He said the store ordered three more containers of trees this year than in 2002 -- when it sold out of trees a week before Christmas.
Today, Griego said he'll start calling charities who might be interested in taking some free trees off his hands. Later this week, he plans to give trees to anyone willing to haul them away.
Griego blamed the bad sales on the dozens of lot sellers that have set up shop around the island.
"Everyone and their mother was selling Christmas trees this year," he said.
But Sua Paopao, who has sold Christmas trees in the Niu Valley Shopping Center parking lot for 15 years, said it was something else.
"Not too many people are in the Christmas spirit," he said, adding that he also can't compete with big chain stores, which have a larger inventory and trees for cheaper prices.
He said his trees start at about $80, a price that's negotiable and already 40 percent lower than the original.
Paopao has about 300 trees left in stock.
He said last year and the year before, he sold out more than a week before Christmas.
Yesterday afternoon, no one was even looking at his merchandise, and he was lying down on his tree-netting machine.
"We're hurting all over," he said. "This year, we took a drop like everybody else."
The Wal-Mart in Waipahu was all out of Christmas trees yesterday.
But that was because 200 of the 1,000 trees that the store had started selling in the beginning of the season for $18 to $49 had to be given away, and a number were sold at $1.
The store's assistant manager said trees started going on sale last Monday to match competitors' prices.
At Home Depot in Iwilei yesterday, Tafu Scanlan was smiling broadly as he bought his wife a $10 tree.
"I'm very happy that they've still got trees left," he said as he looked at the store's stocked-full tree lot.
Home Depot General Manager Shawn Troup said that the warehouse ordered about 16,200 trees this year and has sold all but about 100.
Last year, the store ordered only 200 fewer trees and sold out well before Christmas.
The surplus at the downtown Home Depot this year is even though the store's advertisement contained a misprint -- that they were forced to honor -- putting the price before any markdowns at almost $10 below the actual price.
